M OrganisatiOnal Change - STAR E

Managing

OrganisatiOnalChange

Tools and methods to become a diversity-sensitive NGO

Managing organisational change.Tools and methods to become a diversity-sensitive NGO

Erasmus+ Strategic PartnershipSTAR E STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST RACISM IN EUROPE

2017–2020

ICJA Freiwilligenaustausch weltweit e.V. (Project Coordinator)

Our special thanks goes toSOCIUS Organisationsberatung gGmbHMaailmanvaihto - ICYE FinlandICYE United Kingdom

The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Content

Preface ��5Introduction: How To Use This Handbook ��7What Is a Diverse Organisation and Why Is It Important to Strive to Become One? ��9Change in Organisations ��14

Methods�� 24How to Read ��25Sociometric Exercises �� 26Mood Board ��28Biography Work �� 30Reflection Exercises ��34Feedback Exercises ��36Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Interview ��39Future Workshop �� 42Organisational Culture Tool: Basic Models And Analysis ��44Decision-Making Culture Analysis ��48Stakeholder Analysis �� 50Six Field Analysis ��52Paradox Intervention – Plan An Exclusive Workshop/Exchange Programme ��54Open Space ��56Rank Exercise ��59Chopstick Exercise �� 62Guerrilla Gardening ��64Caucuses ��67Peer Group Consulting ��69Convergence: From Ideas To Preparing Decisions ��71Consent Decision Making ��75Constellation Work ��78

References ��81Appendix ��82Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership ��83Imprint ��85Recommendation ��86

5Managing Organisational Change. Tools and Methods to Become a Diversity-Sensitive NGO

Dear friends,

It is with great pleasure that we present this handbook on 'Managing organisational change - Tools and methods to become a diversity-sensitive NGO'. It was produced by youth workers and experts within the Erasmus+ Partnership project 'Standing together against Racism in Europe' (STAR E) that lasted from August 2017 until July 2020.

The handbook suggests key criteria for diverse organisations and presents information about communication, relational dynamics and structures which support diversity. Secondly, it introduces instruments and tools to facilitate change processes towards a more diversity-sensitive organisation.

The idea behind this project was inspired by a group of Europe-based youth and voluntary service organisations which cooperate with partner organisations of all continents on a regular basis. In addition to this handbook, a second publication sheds light on racism as a phenomenon and provides tools for training and sensitising staff and co-workers on the topics of racism, discrimination and inclusion. Increasing diversity as a positive challenge and a growing racism which unfortunately also goes along with it, ask for answers from European societies and organisations. Although closely linked to this handbook, the training handbook 'Standing Together Against Racism' can be read and used independently.

We are aware that discrimination is deeply rooted in our societies. Racism, for example, has a 500-year history in Europe, dating from its colonial past. It is still shaping and legitimising, among other things, a global economy which is extremely unjust and ensures the unequal sharing of the wealth of our planet. Racism presupposes that the European worldview is the only one. It is deeply embedded in our heads and hearts, because it has become part of our (even global) structures: be they government, companies or NGOs; be they laws, arts, economy or the 'right' way to do things.

Having said all this this handbook is not a handbook for making a revolution. You will not find a guideline on how to make 'the system' less discriminatory, more fair or more just. But ideally, you will learn something about yourself and feel empowered to shape the place where you are and how people interact with other people, especially within your organisation. Maybe you and your organisation can be one little seed to make 'the system' more just, fair and diverse. As a network ICYE provides intercultural learning experiences to young people, enhancing social and personal development through international volunteer programs. We promote intercultural understanding, equality of opportunity, justice and peace among people in the world. We do so on a basis of having facilitated youth exchanges for more than 70 years. When we talk about racism, discrimination and diversity, we have our own share of experiences. From our experience, we see a close link between how we want to see and shape the world and how we want to shape our organisations. Therefore – even though the handbook will discuss, in depth, organisational approaches to change towards diversity – we consider this as a deeply political question.

Engaging in this project was an opportunity to explore questions of diversity as a concept, to identify and reduce stereotypes and to strive for a desired way of relating to each other. We

Preface

6

Preface

Managing Organisational Change. Tools and Methods to Become a Diversity-Sensitive NGO

also see the concept of diversity as the answer to combatting a rise in racism and other forms of discrimination. The tools and instruments enclosed in this handbook consider two main contexts:

• The creation of safe spaces within organisations where collective learning can take place, in order to create a common understanding and a culture that allows diversity.

• The facilitation of change processes which will support an organisation to value diversity and create structures and procedures to further develop this approach.

The tools introduced come from organisational analysis, communication, decision-making and other fields. Most of them are well known in the realm of change management and are here adapted for organisations working in youth and volunteer exchange. We hope that you will find methods and concepts which will be fruitful for your own change and learning processes.

The Editorial Team


IntroductionHow To Use This Handbook

This handbook builds upon two pillars regarding diversity: Firstly, it introduces dynamics and perspectives we consider central within the theoretical approach to diversity. Secondly, it displays instruments that facilitate change processes towards becoming a more diversity-oriented organisation. Parts of the handbook, therefore, introduce tools of conversation, collaborative learning and reflection while others are more action-oriented looking at decision-making, steps of implementation etc.

Every method description starts with a box with an overview of the theme, number of participants, time duration, difficulty for participants, difficulty for instructors and necessary materials. After this, a detailed instruction describes the preparation, flow of exercise, debriefing and possible variations or recommendations for further reading. The tools are written concise enough to be read on their own, however, we would recommend to at least have a look at the second chapter as well. The aim of chapter two is to further explore central dynamics of change-processes and the resulting responsibilities for facilitators of these processes. Chapter one describes elements we consider important to make diversity work in the context of NGOs: We particularly focus on the perspective of smaller NGOs working in the field of international exchange and adapt the most relevant aspects to keep in mind.

Parallel to this handbook, another one is published: 'Standing together against racism – Handbook on anti-racism sensitisation and training methods in international youth work'. Both handbooks are results from the project 'Standing Together Against Racism in Europe' (STAR E). Nine organisations in the field of international volunteer service have been involved in the development and writing of these two publications. During first conversations, we had a sole focus: 'facilitating change to become a more racism-critical organisation.' However, in the first discussions, we shifted our core question towards diversity. Change is often a directional process moving away from (a racism-accepting environment) but also moving towards to (a diversity-sensitive organisation). From our perspective, we think that sustainable change processes need to consider both dimensions. As the racism-critical stance is well discussed in the other handbook we thought to explore the positive opposite of racism (or other forms of discrimination) which we see in diversity. Thus, this handbook offers a concise understanding about the topics of change and diversity on its own; yet we recommend readers striving for a more comprising view to have a closer look at the partnering handbook.

Ways of Reading You can read this handbook as a menu front to back. It is equally possible to jump directly to the tools section and decide about which tools to use in your given situation. Especially the latter tools are particularly easy to grasp when reading only the specific section. Both approaches are worthwhile, and you know best what’s helpful for you. If you see relevant chunks missing or find them too difficult to understand, please send us feedback in order to correct or add to those parts. Otherwise, we hope you enjoy.

Levels of Tools and InstrumentsThe instruments imply different levels of complexity. Some of them might trigger challenging dynamics within the group of participants. Others are easier to facilitate. We share our experiences and understanding of these challenges in the introduction of the instruments as much as possible. We also indicate those tools, where we recommend practical experience with

8 Managing Organisational Change. Tools and Methods to Become a Diversity-Sensitive NGO

the specific tool before facilitating it. For some more challenging tools, we recommend asking an external facilitator for support.

In general, the facilitation of change processes is often a very intuitive endeavour. As with other capabilities, skills increase through reflected experience and just doing. Generally, we would, therefore, recommend 'just to try out', starting with easier approaches and/or in defined areas e.g. with groups of friendly colleagues etc.

Introduction

9

ICYE stands for: International Cultural Youth Exchange. The organisation was founded in 1949. Many organisations participating in the project STAR E are members of ICYE. For more information have a look at http://www.icye.org/our-history/

This handbook was created within the project 'Standing together against Racism in Europe – STAR E', funded by the European Union, Erasmus+. It is a result of meetings and reflections about diversity and change that took place over more than two years. The 'us' represents the network in general and more specifically the authors of this handbook.


Why Is Diversity an Important Concept to Strive For?The international network of ICYE was originally founded in order to restore peace and reconciliation between people living in the countries that had been at war. ICYE was grounded on experiences of the Second World War, the Holocaust and the German Nazi regime, and now, nearly 75 years after the end of the war, peaceful co-existence and international collaboration and exchange is increasingly challenged by rising populist and nationalist movements. It may be useful to look back to one of the motivations for the network’s creation: to 'develop intercultural understanding and competence for a more just and peaceful world'. Peaceful co-existence is something to actively strive for. Intercultural competences, knowledge and reflection about diversity, and a clear understanding and positioning against racism and other forms of discrimination are core elements needed in order to make this world, fair, just and, in the end, peaceful. These beliefs inspired us to write this handbook. The handbook reflects a normative approach and, in each of its chapters, introduces experience coming from 70 years of work in intercultural situations and collaborations.

From our perspective, it is personal encounters and relationships that foster a better understanding, as individuals, of people who come from different backgrounds and/or countries. Collaboration, dialogue, curiosity and inclusion are genuinely human characteristics. Structures established in organisations and forms of international collaboration can help to develop these characteristics. In essence, though it is always the people involved who create relationships of understanding and compassion. Equipped with this, they can together work on changing structures in order to create a fairer and more just world. When we discuss diversity, we discuss it as a positive orientation to overcome racism and other forms of discrimination.

Many organisations claim that they support diverse and inclusive approaches. In trainings and courses, these topics play an increasingly important role, often connected with intercultural learning when participants move to different countries. However, apart from trainings, the question of 'Are we an inclusive/diverse organisation?' is not very prominent in organisations’ daily life1. Even without proper statistics, we assume that the majority of paid and

1 Western States Center 2003, 59.

What Is a Diverse Organisation and Why Is It Important to

Strive to Become One?

http://www.icye.org/our-history/

http://www.icye.org/our-history/


volunteer staff in most organisations in Europe, are well-educated and from well-established communities. We are not being critical, just reflecting what we see as the reality from our experience. The point is that the majority of our staff may see the world from a rather privileged perspective. This is important to bear in mind when we talk and reflect on diversity.

'Practice what you preach' is a useful phrase to describe authenticity. How an organisation supports diversity and inclusion within its own structures and procedures will be communicated towards its constituency – in this case, the participants in volunteer programmes.

Sometimes diversity is understood as an approach to fostering an understanding of multiculturalism that tries too much to smooth over differences and doesn’t support challenges arising from the existing heterogeneity. We do not support that notion and instead encourage efforts to openly discuss and reflect about differences and individuality in teams and organisations. The more conflicts about different ways and styles of living which arise, and are dealt with constructively, the more inclusive and supportive of diversity the organisation can be. Leaders of an organisation, therefore, have the responsibility to create space for exchange and constructive dialogue to better understand and accept differences as well as differing perspectives.

Finally, we must consider that discrimination has a structural dimension: Those who discriminate often argue and/or create a privileged position of power by doing so. People who face discrimination do so every day, while often not being given the possibility to leave the position of being neglected, violated or worse. When we talk about diversity as a chance to overcome discrimination and stereotyping, we must, therefore, consider that it may trigger deep emotional reactions. We need to be careful and accept that those of us who are of white background and being brought up in well-established communities often are not able to understand what our fellow discriminated colleagues, co-workers, volunteers or friends are facing.

Definition of Diversity and Inclusion'Inclusion', 'diversity' and 'anti-racism' are linked with each other. Anti-racism approaches define positions and strengthen arguments and behaviour against racism. They are therefore centred on opposing a certain form of discrimination. Diversity and inclusion encompass respect and acceptance of individual differences. Inclusion as a concept was initially developed in the educational sector and especially concerned people with disabilities. More generally, inclusion is about equal access and strives for (social) environments in which no one is left out because of certain characteristics.

y To accept given differences from individual attributes and to stop stereotyping and judging these differences (most particularly regarding racism, religious beliefs, sexual identity and gender, people with disabilities, but there might be other differences needing to be addressed in your organisation).

y To see, understand and overcome the power-relationships that lie within these patterns of stereotyping. Most of the time they are created by groups of people who are in power and who discriminate and prevent others from gaining power. Inclusive and diversity-sensitive approaches try to identify and overcome these power-imbalances.

y To understand differences as something positive: To minimise two existing reflexes: a) to overcome these differences prematurely or b) to place a value on these differences and create prejudice as 'better' or 'worse'. Instead, a group or organisation can accept existing differences and exploit this potential.

What Is a Diverse Organisation and Why Is It Important to Strive to Become One?

11

Please note that we talk about two different kinds of discrimination: the one above is an orienting feature in our daily life. It is not the discrimination we connect with racist, sexist or other kinds of behaviour that stereotypes and de-values any differences and leads to discrimination and too often also to violence. As we consider the first a human competence it does of course by no means justify the second. Indeed, active individual and organisational reflection on our discriminative behaviour is needed to create a strong stance against the second form of discrimination.

Questions are taken and/or adapted from: The Barefoot Guide 5; Mission inclusion; Connection 2017, p. 85 and Western States Center 2003, p. 60–67.


y To refrain from premature judgment, instead, create a space for dialogue and collective learning and exchange.

It is no secret that we all carry stereotypes within us and tend to subconsciously classify people in our minds, which results in different behaviour towards different people. This is, of course, a normal and necessary thing to do since we, as humans, make simplifying assumptions in order to better navigate a complex world and act and react quickly. It is furthermore no secret that we thereby easily discriminate or are discriminated against. An answer to this has been an

increasing number of trainings at the individual level, addressing those who discriminate in order to raise their awareness and inviting them to re-assess their behaviour.

At organisational level, however, research suggests2 that individual trainings alone have not proved to be successful in creating more inclusive or diversity-orientated organisations. Additionally, organisations should create structures that support openness, space for continuous dialogue and follow-up on agreements made. In order to achieve not only individual change but more inclusive organisations, they need to go through change processes. These comprise a variety of activities, workshops and meetings with different people in different settings.

Self-reflection regarding the organisation and its developmentBecoming a diversity-sensitive organisation is a process of learning and reflected action. Like most processes, reflecting and changing an existing culture is not a quick win. To give you a bit more of an idea, we give you a set of questions that you can reflect upon as a starter:

y Who are the people living in our society? What does our organisation look like in comparison? Who are the people working in it?

y Does our organisation reflect the diversity of our society or only part of it?

y Are people with characteristics different from the mainstream in which we live welcome in the organisation only in so far as they assimilate into the existing organisational culture?

y Are leadership positions taken and decision-making done by a diverse or mostly homogeneous group? Are there one or few 'token' persons? Does everyone know how decisions are made?

y Is white culture treated as the norm? Do the art, holiday activities and food reflect the culture(s) of people of colour, too?

y Is discussion of discrimination and oppression normal

2 Beasley 2017, 23.



and encouraged or seen to distract from 'the real work?' Do people in leadership positions participate in and support discussion of power and oppression issues?

y Who is the organisation accountable to? The board, funders, staff or communities targeted by the stated mission?

y Is there space for reflection and communicative structures that help overcome discrimination?

y Are there safe spaces, just for people facing discrimination, for dialogue and exchange identifying and valuing differences?

There are many other facets to diversity-oriented organisations than just the ones addressed above. If you found that one or more aspects would need a change in your own organisation, then we hope that with this handbook we can support you to continue making a change towards a more inclusive work environment.

Organisational Culture: The Connection Between Organisation and IndividualOne important aspect of organisational change is the question of organisational culture. In 'culture' there are often implicit processes that connect the individual aspirations (the 'I') with a collective team or organisational dynamics. Approaches to reflection are less based on structural or procedural questions but more on relational ones. Collaboration in organisations is a question of trust, and trust between people is established in sensitive dialogue and exchange with each other. In consequence organisations – or, better, people in organisations – create patterns of acting that further evolve into cultural habits, which again influence the individual behaviour. Most of the time this is not a deliberate process but rather a continuously created and re-affirmed collective behaviour which might in time become 'the way to do things'. Examples may be visible phenomena – such as how members of the organisation greet each other when they meet, how differing opinions are discussed and decisions taken, or whether diversity is valued.

Organisational culture3 has a wider impact on our doing and being within the organisation than most people imagine. Probably the most important things which determine the culture of an organisation are not visible. When we talk about relational aspects of diversity, inclusion and discrimination, and identify patterns or maybe even stereotypes in order to create a new understanding or a new perspective on these issues, we mostly discuss visible phenomena of organisational culture. However, 'culture' is created often implicitly as described above. Yet these implicit processes influence our ways of thinking. Therefore, we need to ask ourselves whether we strive for a reflective stance, allowing to be challenged about our own set of values through the experience of difference and other perspectives in the room? Or whether we follow patterns to 'protect' our own set of values and thinking and therefore exclude, stereotype and sometimes discriminate against people who represent values, experiences or an individuality 'different' from ours?

Change processes in the field of diversity should create spaces, which challenge us to uncover these deep and hidden values. Once they are on the table it is possible to consciously – individually and as an organisation – affirm these values or change them.

3 Schein, Edgar, Organizational Culture and Leadership, John Wiley & Sons, 4th Edition: 2010.



'Are we (becoming) an inclusive organisation?' Organisations that support diversity and inclusion promote processes or attitudes:

• That create safe spaces for dialogue and exchange, identifying and valuing the differences in people’s backgrounds;

• that accept differences, ambiguity and maybe even conflicts arising from differences as a reality that needs to be facilitated;

• that accept constant change as reality;

• that embrace uncertainty and ambiguity as relevant realities which the organisation will facilitate and manage.



Understanding Planned and Emergent ChangeChange processes are complex and their outcome or central dynamics are often difficult to predict. While these processes can be planned key issues often change during implementation, and intermediate results or the central focus may shift. Reasons for this experience are manifold: people in central functions change (or change their individual point of view), external or internal influencing factors have an effect, or the dynamics of communication between people involved emerge differently than expected.

This leads to two main challenges in the design of change processes. On the one hand, change processes should be well planned to clarify the major steps and provide at least a basic amount of certainty to those involved. The key to planning is, therefore, reliability: Independently from the results, a framework is established which participants feel confident that they can help shape and fill. Secondly, the main challenge during implementation is the open and creative reaction to unexpected developments that can and will arise during the process. From our point of view, it is a collective responsibility to develop ideas for how these newly created questions can be answered and to contribute to conclusions they imply for the overall process.

A metaphor commonly used is: 'The map is not the territory.' The mapmaker knows and can define a direction for development; however, the mapmaker cannot foresee in which way this path will be followed by those who use the map; how the wanderer's mood, fitness, tempo will play out, who likes to talk to whom or whether they want to explore a side-track. It is also unclear whether the perception of the landscape is coherent or whether people see it differently. The metaphor shows: We do not know how a planned process will evolve when it comes to be implemented.

It would be a mistake to interpret these points as an argument against the thorough planning of a change process. It is, however, a plea to identify, appreciate and integrate newly emerging thoughts, dynamics and ideas instead of denying their relevance if they don’t fit the original plan. This makes the design of change processes more complex and challenging, but in our experience more sustainable and realistic. Change processes, therefore, need as much planning as they need intuitive perception about the appropriate dynamic at critical moments of implementation.

The instruments and tools we introduce in this handbook mostly support change processes based on planning and thorough process design. The recommendation of the moment during a larger process when they are most appropriately used is mostly tentative and based on reflected experience. We encourage readers to experiment and use these tools, ideally in the beginning together with other colleagues and/or in less complex situations. Over time, you will be able to develop a sense for using the 'right' or relevant tools at the right time.

Underlying Assumptions About Change ProcessesChange processes follow a certain logic regarding their structure, dynamics and the people involved. In the following sections, we want to set out a few key characteristics of change processes.

Change in Organisations


Structural EmbeddednessOrganisations are built on two relational paradigms. In the so-called formal system assigned roles, functions and responsibilities are in the foreground. The formal system implies a hierarchy of functions and establishes the working relationship between them. It provides guidance on areas of responsibility and decision-making powers; establishes a reward system and clarifies who can ultimately decide in the case of a dispute. This system often corresponds with top-down strategically planned change processes with a clearly set-out approach. On the other hand, there are organisations that strive for flat hierarchies or even reject any kind of formal hierarchies and consequently experiment with other forms of decision-making processes in a more lateral or collectively organised manner. This informal approach, often called the emergent or dialogical approach, is less grounded in functions and resulting hierarchies, and more in the personal relationships and communication routines which exist between the members of the organisation4.

Both systems exist as realities in all organisations and each of them has advantages and disadvantages in supporting change processes. The predominantly planned orientation of a change process supports a focus which helps to identify concrete goals and pathways to attain them. The emergent or dialogical approach recognises the importance of a relationship design and thus a very different but equally important perspective on change and transformation. Most of the time it is the integration of both perspectives that best support change processes: a planning orientation that integrates the formal areas of responsibility with open and conversational approaches that creatively support new ideas.

The field of international exchange and volunteering explicitly builds on the creation of international relationships and exchange. Considering the proverb to 'practice what you preach' the focus on relationships and iterative communication as an approach to change and, more generally, to enhance the quality of work should be normal practice in this field and be appreciated in similar organisations.

From our experience in the facilitation of change processes, we often use two basic instruments that acknowledge the need for guidance while at the same time maintaining openness for what might emerge during the process. These two elements are: the design of a broad process architecture and the establishment of a process group.

Process ArchitectureA clear process architecture helps on the planning side to develop the necessary understanding of and guide to a change process. What we mean by process architecture is less a detailed content-heavy plan on how and when to deal with the different aspects of a change process, but more a clear design specifying at which point and in what way topics are discussed, as well as who needs to be involved in the process and when. In the following sections, we present such an ideal architecture,9 which of course can and should be adapted. What is important to us is that the participants in a change process, despite all the advantages of a pre-defined framework, are given the opportunity to adopt all the steps of this architecture to changing circumstances.

Inquiry: Identify background and central interestsIn order to collect information about the status quo, various inquiry methods can be used

4 Samantha Slade (2018), Going Horizontal: Creating a Non-Hierarchical Organization, one Prac-tice at a time.Sam Kaner (2014), Facilitators’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, 3rd edition



and combined5.These might be in-depth interviews with different people or groups within the organisation, foundational documents (such as values, relevant strategies and policies) and documents relevant to the area of change. This information is compiled and used to provide a detailed overview of the perceived problems and potentials.

Kick-off event: Create Ownership At the official start of a process, all more or less affected people in the organisation (and perhaps further relevant ones) are brought together. Here, the background of the process, its goals, approaches and planned steps are presented to the degree of precision that exists at this point. This ought to involve everyone in the process and create ownership6.

Workshops and Sub-projects: Develop ideas This is one of the most common and flexible elements of a change process. Within workshops you can work intensively on the issues of the change process: evaluate, plan, debate, process, envision, discuss, learn or experiment together7. Important questions here are about who needs to take part in the workshops and who facilitates the workshops.

When small and intermediate targets are decided upon and need to be elaborated further, small groups or individuals can organise themselves in sub-projects. They usually tackle a specific issue in the overall process and feed their findings and ideas back to the whole group during the next gathering/workshop.

Iterative Workshops, Coaching etc: Experiment with solutions Change generally implies that those involved can feel a certain motivation and urgency about the overall direction. As well as adopting new ways of thinking and doing it involves un-learning of old behavioural patterns and practices of thinking and doing.

These are personal and collective development processes that are usually not achieved easily or fast. It often needs exchange and interaction between those who are affected and with those in a position to account for the planned change. It also needs experimentation and joint reflection. Often, additional support is provided in the form of coaching, peer group consulting or team supervision8.

Some of these instruments are more effective when facilitated by externals, since they do not share the organisation’s blind spots. However, if external or professional support cannot be used, it is helpful to experiment with ideas for how to organise and assist reflection and support from internal sources. In general, some form of support is needed.

A major milestone in these iterative events is the moment when agreements are reached. To realise these ideas during the challenging daily work routine procedures should be established how these agreements can be and sustained. Possibilities could be: regular reviews in working groups; specially-introduced focus groups or advisory persons or boards; regular checks about the topics and the agreements achieved etc9.

5 Recommended methods from this handbook: Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Interview; Sociometric Exercises; Constellation Work6 Recommended methods from this handbook: Biography Work; Open Space; Guerilla Gardening7 Recommended methods from this handbook: Reflection Exercises; Future Workshop; Organ-isational Culture Tool: Basic Models; Decision-making culture analysis; Stakeholder Analysis, Six Field Analysis8 Recommended methods from this handbook: Feedback Exercises; Peer Group Consulting9 Recommended methods from this handbook: Mood Board; Reflection Exercises



Closing event At the end of a change process, a closing event brings together all people who participated at the start. This step needs a recap, where achievements are recognised and put into perspective and gratitude is expressed towards those who were engaged in the process. Eventually, it is important to mark the end with a celebration of what has been done.

This rather general architecture can be adapted to the desired goals or given contexts of the change process, e.g.:

y Open-ended large-group events (e.g. Open Space formats – see tools) often bring personal identification, ownership and creativity to the process. At the same time, they can increase a mixture of uncertainty and expectation regarding how the outcomes of the meeting will be handled. However, from our point of view, inclusive and participating activities should always be part of change processes – especially when they are organised around this topic.

y Uncertainty and worries about change processes, which can arise for different reasons ('How will my job/volunteer work change?'; ' Can I still influence what is going on?'; 'What do I have to re-learn now?') can be addressed more adequately in smaller groups. Confidence usually correlates with group size. For example, if the process of change involves the introduction of new working mechanisms that might trigger worries and fears (for example, the introduction of new mechanisms for performance assessment, such as regular staff talks or in non-hierarchical organisation the introduction of mechanisms to jointly determine salaries), smaller groups offer a more helpful forum to address these worries than a large group where focus and rigour in discussions are more difficult to achieve.

Process GroupThe second central element at this point is the process group. The diverse composition of this group should represent the different perspectives of the organisation. The members should volunteer for this group, although some positions are required (e. g. representative of the organisation’s leadership). Especially in organisations working in the field of voluntary service the process group can make sure that those volunteers and co-workers that work part time are represented adequately. The group usually consists of 4–6 people and meets regularly to collect feedback from within the organisation (how do people currently feel about the process?) and discuss the consequences for the process. The group can be understood as serving the organisation and the purpose of change. This results in three core tasks:

y It collects coordinates interim results from existing subgroups and workshops and forwards them to the larger attendance in respective group-settings. It keeps and communicates an overview of the entire change process when it is decentralised.

y Due to its diverse composition it integrates the different perspectives on the change process, helps to identify and deal with questions and concerns from within the team and takes process-related decisions if necessary (and mandated).

y The process group is the central point of contact for external cooperation (e.g. with experts and consultants etc.) and for internal coordination of different activities supporting the change process. Due to their work the members of this group often accumulate a certain amount of knowledge regarding the topic and the process. It is important that the group is as transparent as possible about this knowledge.

The role of the process group is easily underestimated. As membership is spread across hierarchies it is a central factor to make sure that all stakeholders are actively involved in the change processes. This diversity of membership legitimises the decisions the group takes –



especially in volunteer and exchange organisations which depend on volunteer workers. As members of the process group communicate informally with their colleagues elsewhere, this group often influences change processes on the formal and informal level. Both approaches have impact on the process and should be considered carefully.

Additionally, we have also noted how process groups act as the energy centre which ensures the change process stays in the focus of relevant groups and people. A change process is work. It needs invested time for reflection, as well as meetings to discuss, share experience or decide about strategy and plans of implementation. It also needs room for collective learning and dialogue. It involves a variety of emotions, some of them difficult and distancing. Very often change processes take place parallel to the normal work within the organisation, whether for volunteers or employees. Meetings and working groups compete for valuable time allocated to daily work. It is often the process group that reaffirms the reasons for the change process and the importance of doing this often additional work with equal passion.

When volunteer co-workers are involved it is especially important to consider why they commit themselves to the process. Face to face discussions about their expectations at different phases could be helpful. The planning of the change process should respect co-workers’ and other volunteers’ time limitations. These are some pragmatic signals from which volunteer co-workers can sense that their participation is meaningful and has an impact on the process.

Central Dynamics in Change Processes Change processes often meander between open and creative phases of idea development and decisive 'closing' stages of decision-making and mapping out the subsequent implementation. Here we present a relevant basic pattern often existing in the dynamics in change processes. Within these fundamental dynamics, deeper layers of agreement, resistance, and misunderstanding find their way into the process. They in turn influence each other's dynamics and adapt their course to the given reality.

Patterns to take decisions – defining openness and limitationsDuring your change processes, you will identify certain topics and issues that you decide to work on more closely. Since these topics will be individual to every process and organisation, we cannot provide specific ideas for how to deal with them. Yet, whenever you approach a certain topic, work with it and then come to a conclusive end, there is a certain process that reoccurs.

Divergence When starting to explore a topic, people will need to reveal what they know or need to know about content and process. From a personal perspective it is important that there is enough time connecting with the other people involved. Participants need time to delve into something new, maybe unfamiliar and also the openness to try out different ways to approach this topic. Therefore, you can plan to use methods and situations that allow people to get to know and experiment with different



perspectives. This phase is overall about exploring both the topic as well as any differing perspectives and opinions. Use the practical tools you find in this handbook and recall those methods that you already know.

Consider which ones might be helpful to work on a topic (maybe with some alteration to the method)10.

Emergence Once you have introduced the topic and people have gained and shared their insights, there will be a time when new ideas, creative syntheses and new perspectives will emerge. This phase includes the initial stage of developing solutions while there is still room for a variety of ideas and suggestions before they are sorted, assessed and filtered. This is both the most valuable and volatile phase of working with a topic. Here, you can make good use of creative methods (for instance including craft materials) that aim at co-creating something new out of the gathered perspectives and opinions from the divergence phase. You might take up a specific difficult case that you had in your organisation and experiment with ideas, what you could do differently in similar situations.

The Emergence Phase is sometimes also called the 'Groan Zone': at a certain point you might feel that the topic and the search for creative solutions or their assessment has been exhaustively discussed or find that the conversations peter out. Experience has shown that sometimes the most valuable perspectives or ideas emerge when you stay on a little longer in the emergence phase and not start closing up too quickly11.

Convergence Now that you have come up with a multitude of ideas, perspectives, solutions, new approaches etc., it is time to bring all of that together. What are the precise learnings from all those outputs and outcomes? What is a common base which people agree upon, which is at the same time precise enough to not be vague? Using different sizes of groups (triads, other small groups) you can focus on the essence of your work and define what you want to take with you for the future in your organisation. At the end, you will have very concrete outcomes, broken down so it is clear what follows next and who does what. During the phase of convergence, you will have to make sure that no entirely new topics are opened and that the group focuses on common agreements and prioritisation.

Regarding the tools in this handbook there are some that can work with all of these dynamics, for example Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry or Future Workshop. Others can be used particularly as a decision-taking tool or to support the creation of ideas in an emergent sense, like analytical tools etc. Some others are used solely for a named purpose, for example creativity tools or biography-work which are clearly grounded in the emerging phase or decision-taking instruments as part of convergence. In the method part of this handbook we have identified the contexts (not exclusive) where we see the best potential use of the tools.

Working with ResistanceEven with the best planning of a process and the prediction of unforeseen dynamics, moments which throw a change process off course are a common experience. For example, there is

10 Recommended methods from this handbook: Paradox Intervention; Caucuses; Constellation Work11 Recommended methods from this handbook: Reflection Exercises; Future Workshop; Open Space



often resistance to the change from the members or volunteers, participants, users, or other stakeholder-groups (or individuals) involved in or affected by the process. This resistance manifests itself in various forms: It can be expressed in passive form by 'working to rule' and will often reduce social contact. Or it will be more proactive such as deliberate contradiction of prevailing opinions or failing to turn up to meetings. Resistance is often grounded in one of three elements:

y An emotional and often unclear reaction that is difficult to explain cognitively. This reaction is less directed against content than the protagonists who represent this content. Therefore, resulting conflicts quickly become personal. The emotional response is often also related to aspects of the process, e.g. not enough transparency regarding the background, not enough involvement, too many sudden steps to be carried out with great urgency etc.

y Factual reasons e.g. that the adopted ideas or concepts are, from the perspective of this person, 'professionally wrong'. Often there is a grain of truth in this. A helpful strategy is therefore to review the criticised ideas and to appreciate (to a certain extent) divergent opinions.

y Issues of power, status and influence. These questions or interests mostly aren’t expressed openly (especially because power issues in many organisations in the fields of international exchange are taboo). Consequently, other topics dominate discussion and the resistance usually lasts until space is given, within the framework of the change process, to addressing issues related to power and interests.

As in many other social settings, we suggest that 'disruptions take precedence.' Resistance is important; in particular, relating to the second element above, it can help recognise mistakes in the phase of developing and shaping ideas. When we talk about organisations working interculturally and creating a more diversity-sensitive approach, the backgrounds of resistance need to be considered.

Different cultural perspectives can lead to completely different levels of conflict and resistance, which - if not addressed - significantly reduce confidence in change processes.

People InvolvedLeadership and Teams in Change ProcessesLeaders often play an important role in the shaping of a change process. Yet to support the feeling of ownership we recommend sharing this responsibility with members of the organisation who can represent, integrate and facilitate different perspectives (as already discussed in regard to the formation of a process group). A change process always requires individual but also collective responsibility.

Leaders in change processes12 There are different directions from where the initiative for change can come, as was mentioned before. This can be from somewhere at the grass-roots level of the organisation or the top decision- makers, or anywhere in-between. However, for change to successfully be implemented, it is essential that those in leadership positions are on board and fully committed.

Mainly from an informal perspective leaders have a special role to function as role models for the rest of the organisation. Thus, when it comes to new ways of doing things, such as testing new ways of behaviour or communication, leaders will be carefully observed by the rest of

12 Glatz & Graf-Götz 2011, 354–359




the people to see how far what they do matches with what they say. If they act congruently in this, they create a major drive for the change to be successful, since people will begin to follow them13.

This applies particularly in the field of diversity. Change in relation to diversity is still emerging as a new field in organisations and does not yet have established rules or procedures of communication. If leaders only announce changes or call for diversity-embracing attitude in the organisation, but do not follow the call themselves, they will be considered insincere. This results in a diminished chance for the desired change to happen, to say the least, and it could also decrease the overall likelihood of them being followed by the people they lead.

And with regard to the effective implementation of change processes, it is the leadership’s task to communicate the different steps of the process back into the organisation and to be transparent about what is happening. Thereby, leaders already let new agreements and ways of behaviour and communication shine through - so they have both the responsibility but also the honour of letting people see what is changing.

When the change involves questioning one’s own power (which is often the case when reflecting about diversity and discrimination in organisations), leaders are expected to be open for self- reflection. It may become emotional to question one’s own authority in connection with subconscious patterns of discrimination, so sometimes it might be necessary for the leadership team to speak about these topics in their own group. Such self-reflection, however, definitely benefits from external support, such as involving somebody in a coaching role.

With regard to the integrity of the change process, leaders – together with the process group - have the special responsibility of ensuring a transparent and fair process. This does not mean that they must always play an active role. Yet they should develop sensitivity towards what they observe and how they themselves effect and are affected by the process and the changes.

Teams and their involvement in Change Processes Often in facilitation work we see leaders and teams standing opposed 'against' each other – especially in hierarchical organisations. We would instead argue for a shared responsibility, drawing on different opinions and creating something collectively. Regarding diversity and change processes we think it is important to facilitate clear and understandable rooms within which members and participants of change processes can communicate their questions and contributions. We want to highlight three settings that could be framed:

y Safe spaces and structures. Change processes or, more generally, any form of organisational development are accompanied by feelings of uncertainty and sometimes fear of the unknown. In order to support peoples’ creative involvement a process structure should provide possibilities where this uncertainty can by communicated. 'Safe spaces' include:

y A reduction of number of participants to a reasonable number that encourages confidential talk – we suggest a maximum of 15 people as a working-group.

y Establish, if necessary, clear rules of conversation; first of all to agree that everyone is heard until finished. Try to get everyone to contribute – at least in an introductory and in a closing circle, but better also of course in-between.

y Create an atmosphere of appreciation and curiosity. Most important here is that the group shouldn’t prematurely dismiss or undervalue statements of others.

13 Recommended methods from this handbook: Rank Exercise; Chopstick Exercise; Consent Deci-sion Making


y Accept emotions and other impressions as valuable source of information that could help you better understand the situation; let participants talk about their impressions not only from a cognitive but also from an intuitive or emotional point of view.

y Clear room for decision taking. All participatory approaches have a framework within which the room for collective decision-making – as opposed to the decisions taken by leadership or top management – needs to be defined. The definition of this collective responsibility is not trivial: too much responsibility can lead to disorientation and disempowerment; too tight a framework can lead to disappointment and lack of ownership. Furthermore, it is important not to limit the authority for collective decision-making during the change process itself e.g. by management decision. This would again lead to severe disappointment and – understandable – resistance to the whole process. Trust in the process can also be built and sustained through agreement on intermediate results and how they will be used.

y Space for informal conversation. Creativity doesn’t always follow the predefined schedule, nor does the energy of people. Although there are tools that integrate creative approaches into change processes (like future workshop, biographic work etc.) just a space for informal conversation (small kitchen space, a part of a library, garden etc.) often evolves into a space where ideas are generated and new interpretations can be discussed.



Methods


How to Read

Summary: This is just a short abstract of the tool and to what means it is mostly used.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Sometimes these tools have more than just one objective. If so, the most prominent are described here.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Different forms of engagement range from individual work to group reflection to activating moments. As 'form follows function' it is important to identify the objective and the level of energy needed at the given moment. This can lead to answer the question which form of engagement is suitable.

Application in moderation cycle: In the introducing chapters we have introduced the dynamics of opening (divergence), arising (emergence) and closing (convergence). The tools we introduce reflect these dynamics, which is why we suggest specific moments in the cycle.

Duration: Can range between a few hours and some days. Group Size: Also a wide range possible.

Level of difficulty: It reflects on the complexity and the difficulties a facilitator might face. 'Beginners' should start with easier tools, whereas experienced facilitators can also have a look at those more difficult. In this handbook we have three levels of difficulty: easy, medium, difficult.

Facilitator: In this section we describe the role of the facilitator and – if they apply – some specific requests in terms of competence, experience etc. One important question we consider here additionally is whether it can be facilitated internally or – due to its complexity, possible dynamics arising etc. – we would recommend an external facilitator.

Materials needed: Some materials – especially more creative ones – need specific material to support the process of reflection and communication. We listed all materials needed here.

Process description: Gives a more detailed description of the tools and the process to use them. Sometimes that includes deliberate steps to follow, sometimes impactful dynamics to watch out for. In general, it shall help to get a better understanding and dare oneself to experiment.

Debriefing options: Debriefing options describe ways to reflect the process or the tool itself. Sometimes in this section we also introduce ideas of follow up for later etc.

Finally, there are headlines only in some of the introduced tools, for example:

y Application and exercises

y Modification as variations of the tool introduced.


Summary: Stemming from systemic process work, sociometric exercises allow for a clear overview of where people position themselves in respect to specific questions. Furthermore, they allow people to articulate their position, thereby supporting groups to get a good feeling for where they stand on the questions. The method is ideal for the beginning of a workshop or to receive a quick group feedback about things like the approaches being used or how to address a question.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: To see one’s own and others’ position in respect to particular questions and experiences.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Constellation work, voicing opinions and developing a position.

Application in moderation cycle: Opening up a topic, getting to know one another in the group.

Duration: 15–45 minutes.

Group Size: 5–30 people.

Level of difficulty: Easy.

Facilitator: The facilitator acts as a curious interviewer, so they would ideally be external or at least not part of the group. Especially for large groups it needs good awareness to keep everyone focused on the single voices that are interviewed.

Materials needed: Facilitation cards, 1–2 long ropes.

Process description: Sociometric exercises are a simple but very effective tool for participants and facilitator(s) to get a feeling for the group and what the group is addressing. The exercises are often used, after a round of introductions, in order to delve into the topic.

General process: The whole idea is simple. The facilitator defines an axis with a question (e.g. How long have you worked in the organisation?) and places facilitation cards in two corners of the room with, for example ‘less than a month’ and ‘over twenty years’ on them. The group sorts itself accordingly so that people stand in a row (in the example: from the one who works the longest in the organisation down to the newest one).

The facilitator then interviews individual people about why they are standing where they are standing. The rest of the group listens. It can make sense to interview everyone, but for some questions it is not so important that everyone says something. The idea of the interviewing is to enrich the positioning with further information (in the example: 'are you in the same job as when you started; how was it for you when you started?').

Usually, the facilitator asks a few different questions which make people position themselves along the axis. It starts with more easy questions (such as the one in the example) and evolves to more delicate ones regarding the topic of the workshop. For some questions, it makes sense to establish two axes that form a matrix for people to position themselves in. For that, ropes function well as an orientation resembling the axes (arranged as a cross with facilitation cards at their ends).

Sociometric Exercises


Sociometric Exercises

Application: There are two helpful rules for the process which should be explained – especially when it comes to positions based on opinion:

1. One’s positioning is an association given in this moment (which may change the next minute - and that would be ok).

2. People are not to be judged based on where they position themselves. This is crucial so participants remain where they feel right, without being influenced too much by the others.

To give the facilitator a feeling for the type of questions to ask in sociometric constellations, here are a few examples:

y How long have you worked in your organisation?

y How confident do you feel about the topic xyz (topic of the workshop)?

y How satisfied are you with the previous process xyz (especially for self-evaluation questions)?

y How urgently do you feel a change needs to happen?

y With whom do you work closely; and with whom less often? (This does not happen on an axis but freely in the room so that people position themselves in relation to the other people).

y What do you think about the workshop today?

y How do you rate your own experience (beginner vs. expert)?

y How much do you believe that xyz gets implemented/started…?

If the facilitator has enough time, you can also ask within the group if there are questions that people would want to use to create a constellation.

Debriefing options: Especially in teams that have worked longer together, the facilitator can ask what insights were new and what surprised them. Maybe they made observations that only the sociometric constellation could unveil or it brought in new perspectives.


Summary: This simple activity helps you to keep an overview on how a group feels at different times during a workshop. You can find out what might need to be adjusted in the workshop design as a response to how the participants are feeling.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Receive quick feedback from participants on a continuous basis. Find out if adjustments of the workshop design are needed on the go.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Individual reflection, visualised expression of emotional status.

Application in moderation cycle: Throughout, especially to be checked after longer breaks or between modules.

Duration: Accompanying method, very short, repeatedly throughout a workshop. Group Size: mid-sized group (no bigger than 20 people).


Facilitator: Needs to occasionally remind the participants to move their cards/figures. No special skills are needed.

Materials needed: Facilitation cards, little figures that can be identified individually.

Process description: The method is meant to keep a visual overview of the group’s mood and feelings throughout a workshop. For that, various facilitation cards are each labelled with a feeling or states of mind/mood. These feeling cards should offer participants a variety for

Mood Board


Mood Board

them to choose from. During breaks, participants are asked to put their chosen figure on their current feeling or mood. Every break they check again, if the figure still reflects their feelings or if they want to put it somewhere else.

The facilitator has two options for using this visual overview of the participants’ moods. S/he can summarise what can be seen or concluded from the mood board (makes sense especially after a break) and reflect that back to the group. This information can also be used to adjust the planning of the remaining programme. If, for example, many people have put their figure on 'tired' before a longer presentation is planned, it might be a good idea to change that item on the agenda with another, more active one. Either way, the facilitator should ask the group if the suggestion for a change of agenda resonates with them or if they want to stick to the initial plan.

Mood suggestions: As a suggestion the adjectives you offer could be: happy, bored, focused, moody, relaxed, enthusiastic, nervous, tired, in flow, thoughtful, sad, inspired, hungry, grumpy. Put some blank facilitation cards and a pen next to them, so that participants can add their own feelings.

Debriefing options: Ask the group to reflect on how they perceived the individual and group changes of moods. Was there a particular pattern? What supported the participants in situations when they were low on energy or what could have supported them? What kept the participants describer?


Summary: We use Biography Work as a generic term to describe an adaptable tool that brings out and visually represents life histories and stories of individual people, teams or entire organisations. It can follow a general question like 'What were the experiences and steps that brought you to where you are right now?' or 'What is the history of our organisation?'. Or it may use a more specific question like 'How have you experienced leadership in your life?'. The process involves creative work that allows those who do it to connect with their own intuition and access what is emotionally most important to them. It builds rapport between those involved, either by jointly developing an organisation’s history or by sharing personal histories. It also contributes to sense-making and creating a deeper understanding of individual or shared identities, motivations, values, behavioural patterns and, in the case of organisations, practical dos and don’ts.

In the context of change management, it can be a powerful tool to externalise personal motivations for change, to prepare the ground for a more trusting collaboration between those involved or to serve as a point of departure in developing a vision for future development.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Building trust and a deeper understanding of one’s history, values and motivations.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Creative and intuitive expression, relationship-building through story-telling, deep listening and sense-making.

Application in moderation cycle: During the early stages of the divergence phase, preparing the foundation for a good process.

Duration: Depending on the size of the group, it can last from 60 minutes to several hours. Preparing individual visual representations takes between 15 and 30 minutes. The subsequent presentation and story-telling needs at least 10 to 15 minutes per person or at least 45 minutes for an organisation.

Group Size: Working on individual biographies should be done in a group of not more than 10 persons. Organisational biographies can be developed in larger groups: here it is usually certain individuals who know the history of the organisation well, while others might not be able to add to the story from their own experience and memory, but can listen and ask questions.

Level of difficulty: Medium.

Facilitator: In guiding individual biography work external facilitators would be more appropriate. Facilitating individual biography work can sometimes trigger unexpected emotional responses when participants get in touch with painful memories and past experiences. This means that the participants need to be ready and willing to reveal their personal history, while the facilitator should be prepared for that and be conscious of the role they may need to play.

The development of organisational biographies could also be facilitated by internal moderators.

Materials needed: The more creative the material available the more it inspires participants to use it. This might include, but not be confined to, ropes, different coloured paper, crepe paper, coloured pipe cleaners, different natural or precious stones, shells, photos or photo cards, gaming pieces, all kinds of figures, different objects etc.

Biography Work


Biography Work

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3


Biography Work

On the other hand, it’s also possible to work with more abstract tools (such as different coloured and shaped moderation cards that can be labelled). Such technical and more abstract work materials tend to introduce a more factual and less emotional approach to biographies.

The method also needs a big enough room for participants to lay out their creative work.

Additional resources: Photo flash cards for different thematic areas can usually also be found online (used in coaching or counselling settings).

Process description: Possible process for individual biography work:

1. The facilitator needs to decide at what point during a workshop, if at all, such an exercise could be purposeful and add value. It is equally important to phrase the opening question correctly. Additional examples could be: 'What’s the path that led you to your current position?' 'What has been your experience of working in teams?' 'What led you to work in the field of….?' 'What is your story?'

2. The creative material should be laid out in one corner of the room.

3. The facilitator gives a short introduction mainly explaining what is done in this exercise: presenting the opening question, inviting participants to tell a story by using creative materials and inviting them to start. A key principle to be included here is that participants should be led as much as possible by their hands and the material that inspires them rather than systematically thinking about what they want to express by what they are doing.

4. While participants start their creative work, it might be helpful to play relaxing music in the background. Overall, it should be done in a state of silence and concentration.

5. One option is that an object in the middle of the room indicates the 'here and now' and participants build their biographies leading towards this centrepiece. Otherwise, participants can find their own working area in different parts of the room.

6. When everybody is finished the creative works are presented one by one. It may add an additional perspective to invite bystanders to first share what they see. This should, however, focus on a general impression or aspects that they find striking, and should avoid immediate interpretations of what something means.

7. After this short feedback from the other participants the creator tells the group what she or he has made. Other participants can ask questions or share their thoughts and insights.

In the end, the creator should have a brief final word. Options for modification:

Organisational Biography Work

To use this exercise for bringing out narratives around organisational history, including the myths and hero stories, opening questions could be: 'What is our story – if we see our organisation as a being that was born, that grew up and matured?', 'What has been the path of our organisation from the first concept to the here and now?' etc.

Example of symbolic objects


It is possible to let participants all lay out their own personal history of the organisation and later compare the different perspectives, or to facilitate it as a collaborative piece of work. The latter makes better sense if a significant number of the participants are not fully aware and have not been personally been involved from the beginning.

In terms of materials it can be helpful to have available a selection of symbolic objects, e.g. a horseshoe, an onion, an hourglass, scissors, a nail etc. This might help people make sense of certain events from their different perspectives.

When working collaboratively on the organisational biography it is helpful to use a long rope or paper tape on the ground as a timeline to be embellished with key events, moments or personalities entering or leaving the organisation or specific positions. In this case, the story-telling can be done simultaneously while people are working on the timeline, or can be preceded by a phase of individually adding symbols to the timelines which are later explained and discussed.

In all cases: Don’t forget to take final photos of the artworks!

Debriefing options: Debriefing can be done at two levels: The content level and the process or methodological level. The first is about reflecting and summarising what the group found out and learned throughout the process. Usually, an important insight is that opening up on personal issues, becoming visible as a person rather than a role, matters for the ability of a group to work together and enhance communication. It can possibly also induce a shift to another level in other areas. However, this might only become visible later.

When debriefing on the process of collectively building an organisational biography the final discussion usually provides rich material for a joint sense-making of the organisational history. This will include how certain people or events have shaped the organisation and the organisational culture, how certain values and behaviour patterns can be traced back to the history of the organisation, and what past experiences mean for future developments.

At the process level, the debriefing question would be how participants felt about this kind of work or if there is anything, they can draw from it methodologically.

Biography Work


Summary: Reflection is one of the most basic and powerful activities during workshops. In essence it is the process of learning from experiences. It powers the growth of individuals and teams as well as entire organisations.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Take as many valuable insights and learning from people’s experiences, either from collaborating together or from an exercise during a workshop.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Self-reflection, partner reflection.

Application in moderation cycle: In the middle and towards the end of a cycle; after exercises.




Facilitator: Reflection exercises can easily be self-facilitated and only require someone to keep track of time, put up the questions and announce what to do.

Materials needed: Pen and paper in case of a self-reflection exercise.

Process description: Reflection means to look at something from a distance in order to discover new insights and learnings for next time, and to enhance people’s perspective on issues which affect them. It is a very simple practice and anyone can do it – but we tend not to take the time to do it.

In workshops, you can either take experiences from exercises done with the group or take participants’ previous experiences as sources for reflection. The direction of the reflection is set through the type of questions you ask. You can ask more general questions such as:

'What did you observe in the last exercise?' or 'When you look back at situation xyz, is there any observation you can make about it?'

With a bit more focus (if you want to highlight positive aspects or critical moments for instance), you can ask questions as follows:

'What were you really happy about and what didn’t go as you wished – and why?'

Furthermore, reflection questions can be connected to a topic: 'When you look at this situation, what observations can you make that give you insights into diversity and discrimination?'. Note that reflection means to be operating on a meta level, which implies not judging but rather exploring and observing what happened. So, it is not about judging an action as good or bad, but about finding out how and why it happened and what lessons can be taken from it for oneself.

Especially in open and/or new processes participants – in real life and during workshops – can make mistakes. Extensive reflections (looking, for example, at what happened, how the protagonists worked it out and what was the learning) can have a healing effect in a situation when otherwise – at least potentially – the participant might feel negatively about the experience and thus not wish to engage in reflection and learning.

Reflection Exercises


Reflection Exercises

It is advisable therefore to allow enough time for reflection and also for sharing of similar experiences from the other participants who have witnessed the exercise.

Application

There are different ways to encourage people to reflect upon something. To make reflection more powerful, you can apply a number of the following methods one after another.

Self-reflection: Put up the question that people ought to reflect upon and give them 5–15 minutes for themselves to ponder that question. If you have several questions, add more time. Invite everyone to use pen and paper to support their own reflection.

Peer reflection: Let people find partners and come together in pairs to reflect upon a question. It is not necessary that they do it one after the other, though that is an option. You can set a time for each one to share their reflections while the other just has to listen. That way, participants do not feel pressured to respond to others and have time to dig up their own thoughts.

Triad reflection: Having three people adds a lot of perspective and enriches the reflection. At the same time, it is a little less intimate than doing it alone or in pairs. Therefore, very sensitive topics are perhaps better reflected upon in smaller groups. Also here you can set a time for each person while the others listen carefully.

Group reflections: Eventually, you can pose a question for the whole group to reflect upon. This could be used if, for instance, the topic requires quite some different perspectives to be understood in depth, or to bring reflections from smaller groups into the collective.

Combined settings: To make a reflection really effective, you can have 2–3 of the above methods follow one another successively. You might start with an individual reflection, let the people share their insights in a pair thereafter and then have all insights brought into the group for common reflection. That way, you make sure that each participant is delving into the reflection process enough and becomes more enriched by others’ perspectives.

Debriefing options:

y You can discuss in which situations it would make sense for the participants to pause a moment and reflect upon their experiences in their daily lives. Subsequently, how could that be implemented so they would really do it?


Summary: Constructive feedback is a powerful tool for fruitful collaboration and building strong working relationships in an organisation. Yet, it needs practice and some guidelines so that colleagues benefit from a constructive experience. Workshops are a suitable place to practice constructive feedback through facilitated exercises.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Become firmer and more experienced in giving and receiving feedback. Solve critical issues before they become a conflict. Learn to be more honest and authentic to each other, which fosters more acceptance for differences, i.e. diversity.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Partner reflection, direct feedback, safe exchange. Application in moderation cycle: in the middle and towards the end of a cycle.




Facilitator: Can be either internal or external. Facilitation is especially needed for clarifying the practice and guidelines for feedback. In one-on-one settings it is less necessary to have facilitation; in group settings aware and empathetic facilitation is crucial. Furthermore, feedback has a close link to conflict transformation. The more sensitive feedback becomes, the more external facilitation becomes helpful to moderate the process.

Materials needed: None.

Process description:

Giving and receiving feedback

Often we are not used to giving or receiving feedback. We therefore need to learn and practice it to benefit from its potential. Giving feedback means to share what we observe about another person in a way that it is nurturing and supporting, and possibly expands that person’s knowledge about themself. For the receiver to be able to receive the feedback, the giver needs to express it quite deliberately. There are a few helpful suggestions for making feedback come across as constructive and helpful.

y Feedback is not about criticising the other person; it is about giving them an external perspective on their behaviour, attitudes or performance. This will include feedback that is perhaps difficult to hear. However, it is fair to the receiver also to receive positive feedback. This allows the receiver to be more open to critical feedback, since they realise they will receive positive messages as well.

y Give feedback in a way that expresses your personal perspective and does not generalise ('I’ve seen you putting a lot of energy into that project' instead of 'You invest much energy in that project').

y Imagine you are receiving your feedback – could you accept it easily because it is expressed in a constructive way?

y Always make sure that you are being respectful and the other person can keep their dignity.

Feedback Exercises


y Allow the receiver to respond to your feedback, and stay open to their perspective. You might ask if the receiver has a similar perception to yours and if they can see themselves in the feedback.

y Consider a supportive context for your feedback – especially if it is a more critical one – like a quiet room, enough time also for the other person to react etc. And try not to give feedback if it is not asked for or appreciated.

y As suggestions, sentences which address issues might start as follows: I perceive that…, I sensed the following change…, I’m curious how come that…, Where I feel a bit nervous is…

Similar to giving feedback receiving feedback takes practice and requires certain attitude while listening to what the other has to say. The one who listens can support their own learning from the feedback by applying the following guidelines.

y Keep an open mind while you receive feedback. It can contain valuable insights about yourself. If there is something in the feedback that you think is not valid, you can instantly decide not to let it bother you and focus on the next point.

y Take the feedback as a gift, helping you understand yourself better through external perspectives. Luckily, you can decide yourself what aspects of the feedback you think are valuable, and want to reflect on, and what aspects are not helpful for you. There is no need to justify which aspects you accept or reject.

y Thank your partner for their feedback, even if it’s not so easy for you to take.

Application and exercises

There can be differing reasons why feedback exercises make sense in workshop settings, therefore different types of exercises are useful.

One-on-one: In groups where people work or collaborate together, one on one feedback supports effective working of the individual group members and prevents conflict. But also, if groups are newly- formed, a practice of telling one another what they each perceive about the others can be valuable. Either the facilitator lets participants decide for themselves with whom they want to go into a feedback round or pairs are chosen randomly. If the intention of the exercise is to practice feedback in general or to let people gain confidence in working with feedback, random pairs are a good choice. In this situation those people who do not normally speak to each other much also get a chance to share important perspectives about each other. If the exercise aims to help a group deal with frictions and bring them back into a flow, individual choice might be the better idea.

Set a fixed time for each person and announce the end of the time so the pairs swap their roles between giver and receiver. 5–15 minutes per person is a good time. Both persons should have a chance to be in both roles. If applicable, the facilitator can set up further rounds so that the participants have different feedback partners.

Groups to individuals: In situations where it makes sense to feed back on a particular action or the performance of a person in the workshop, feedback from the group can be the answer. Also, on some occasions it can be helpful for a team to give feedback to its team leader. These situations are more delicate, however, since a group can appear very powerful and the receivers can easily adopt a defensive attitude. Therefore, receiving feedback should always be voluntary.

Furthermore, due to the power of a group, the feedback should be facilitated with particular care that people only speak for themselves and remain respectful.

Feedback Exercises


Groups to groups: If you have different teams that collaborate together, you can even have two teams as a pair (similar to the one-on-one setting) and let them give feedback to each other.

Debriefing options:

y Feedback is not only a tool for workshops but can be part of daily interactions. Therefore, in your debrief you can ponder the possibilities of bringing feedback into daily business and how that could look.

y On a meta level, you can think about which ways of feedback are helpful, which expressions are very supportive and which are rather unhelpful. Take the discussion away from real examples, since feedback should stay only with the people who were involved, and instead try to find more general rules of thumb.

Feedback Exercises


Summary: Appreciative Inquiry is an affirmative approach that makes positive and successful experiences the basis for future action. While traditional problem-solving approaches focus more on analysing problems to avoid them in the future, AI's motto is: Analyse what works and build on it.

While it is in essence a complete methodological approach to change processes, single elements such as the AI interview can be used separately as well.

The AI interview is generally used as a starting point in an AI process, or a future-oriented planning process, in order to generate the right energy and focus for it. It puts a focus on exploring, understanding, appreciating and valuing the best of what is possible and already has happened in an organisation. This is also known as identifying the positive core of a system. It includes clarifying those elements that people want to keep, even as their organisation changes, as well as identifying intriguing potentials for the future. The appreciative interview is usually held as a one-on-one dialogue among an organisation’s members or other stakeholders, which then later is shared with the whole group. It roughly follows this basic structure:

y Initial involvement/experience with the organisation.

y A prominent positive experience.

y Appreciation of own work and person.

y Key supporting/enabling/vitalising factors for the organisation.

y Wonder question (e.g. 'Imagine you wake up in the morning and your problem is solved, how would you know that?').

y Own calling.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Identifying the positive core of an organisation. Generating motivation and positive energy for change.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Connecting with colleagues while learning about personal experiences and drivers.

Application in moderation cycle: Divergence – Early stages of participatory processes Duration: 45–60 minutes.

Group Size: At least 6 participants; no maximum.


Facilitator: Internal or external facilitator.

Materials needed: Interview questions prepared as a hand-out.

Additional resources: There are plenty of online resources on AI and also specifically the AI interview. A few are highlighted here:

https://roundtablethinking.com/appreciative-inquiry/

http://www.click4it.org/index.php/Appreciative_Inquiry_(AI)

https://positivepsychology.com/appreciative-inquiry-questions/

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Interview

https://roundtablethinking.com/appreciative-inquiry/

http://www.click4it.org/index.php/Appreciative_Inquiry_(AI)

https://positivepsychology.com/appreciative-inquiry-questions/




1. Generally introducing AI and the exercise (distribute hand-out with interview questions)

2. Explaining the interview process and highlighting the general attitude as an interviewer

y Encourage storytelling (e.g. please tell me more, how did it feel, what was your contribution?).

y No judgements towards stories.

y Attitude of curiosity.

y Giving time to think about answers (allow moments of silence and don’t step in immediately with new questions).

y Taking good notes including quotes.

y Accepting if interview partner doesn’t want to say more.

3. Group divides itself up in pairs. Optimally pairs consist of people who don’t know each other too well or do not collaborate closely on a daily basis. Pairs take turns to interview each other broadly – the interviewer always taking good notes - following the following interview questions:

y Describe moments in your organisation when you felt most engaged and alive?

y What marked these moments of success and engagement?

y What drew you originally to this organisation and what did you find most inspiring in the beginning?

y What do you value about your work and this organisation in particular?

y Imagine your organisation ten years from now, when everything is just as you always wished it could be. What is different? How have you contributed to this 'dream organisation'?

y What would be your three wishes to make your organisation more vibrant and successful?

4. After about 15 minutes they exchange roles. Facilitator should emphasise that participants don’t shift between these roles but stick to them during the interview until roles are swapped.

5. In small groups of eight people, the participants sit together and share the highlights of what surfaced during their interviews. They reflect together about the supporting factors and conditions in the organisation that made the positive experiences possible.

6. In the plenary session, these central supporting factors and conditions are then shared and collectively discussed.

7. If time allows, some of the personal anecdotes should also be shared in the plenary. The complete notes of the interviews should be shared by hanging them on the wall and including time for a 'gallery walk' of all participants.

Options for modification: Besides using the instrument of the AI interview as a stand-alone it can, of course, also be used as a starting point for a fully-fledged AI process including the phases of Dream, Design and Delivery.


Debriefing options: One of the key aspects of using AI interviews is the final reflection about what conditions made the positive experiences that people talked about during the interview possible. This also means looking for common elements or a red thread from among the collected personal stories.

These 'success factors' are among the key resources to draw on throughout any further change process.



Future Workshop

Summary: The Future Workshop is a technique developed by the future researchers Robert Jungk, Rüdiger Lutz and Norbert Müllert. It is used to identify new ideas and solutions for social problems in participatory and strategy development processes and in the context of organisational development. Therefore, the method is perfectly applicable for finding new ways to minimalise discrimination and maximise the organisation’s inclusiveness. An optimal setting is 15 persons up to a few hundred people working together for 1–2 days.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Formulation of energising plans of action to change the organisation, multiple creative ideas to address given problems, creating ownership for change processes.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: In-depth conceptualising, visioning, planning. Application in moderation cycle: opening up, finding feasible solutions.

Duration: 0.5–2 days.



Facilitator: Ideally external, as they can more easily remove thought barriers in the fantasy phase and check for feasibility in the realisation phase through their external view. Due to the complexity of the process, especially for larger groups, it makes sense for a facilitator to have participated in a Future Workshop previously. If the group is larger than 30 people, it is advisable for there to be more than one facilitator.

Materials needed: Flip-charts, facilitation cards. Optional: creative material and sticky dots.


1. Critique Phase

This phase is used to identify the current problems. It gives the opportunity to get rid of negative feelings and to 'let off steam'. Critiques and negative experiences are brought into the group by brainstorming on cards (it is important that critiques are as precise as possible). It makes sense to let the participants start off on their own to write down their criticisms. Then, people get together in small groups of 3–4 people to share what they have come up with. Eventually, the small groups present their cards to the entirety of the participants. All the collected cards are then clustered into sub-topics by the group. If there are many different sub-topics, you can prioritise the problems to be looked at more closely in the next phase. For that, give each participant the opportunity to mark, with a pen or sticky dot, the three sub-topics they find most relevant. Count the marks and choose a reasonable number of sub-topics on which you want to focus (3–5 sub-topics would be a good amount).

2. Fantasy Phase

In this phase wishes and ideas are collected, free of factual constraints and thinking barriers. The phase can be catalysed by creativity (painting, play, card decks with metaphorical pictures as stimuli etc.) and relaxation exercises (dancing and movement, meditation etc.). In small groups, people brainstorm and then develop utopias and


visions regarding the topic. These ideas are presented creatively and visually for the whole group. The more creative and enjoyable this phase is, the better the results and the connection between participants. It might help to reiterate that constraints do not exist in this phase, which might be supported by throwing in questions such as 'if you had an unlimited amount of money, what would you do?'.

3. Realisation Phase

In the third phase the full spectrum of ideas is combined and checked for feasibility. The whole group comes together and discusses which approaches they would like to develop further together. Now, the utopias are contrasted with realities, and adjustments are made so that they can become possible. By formulating goals and objectives a connection between the current problem and the positive vision is made. This can happen in thematic working groups (possibly with facilitation by external experts). An action plan is crafted, which describes the next steps (as concretely as possible – what, by whom, by when, what needs to be considered etc.). The action plan is discussed and decided upon within the whole group at the end of the Future Workshop.

Debriefing options: Get together with all participants after the process and ask yourself: How helpful was the separation of the problem (critique phase) and the utopias (fantasy phase)? Could such a separation be applied to other problems you face?

Future Workshop


Organisational Culture Tool: Basic Models And Analysis

Summary: Organisational culture has traditionally been defined as collective behaviour and norms in an organisation that have formed over time through experience and the interpretation of it. The culture of an organisation is a kind of normative orientation for its members that ultimately holds the system together. Therefore, there is mostly a conscious side to it, a part that can be described by its members as: 'That’s the way we do things here!' or 'These are our values and working principles'. On the other hand, there is generally also a sub-conscious side to behaviour patterns or ways of interpreting certain situations that members take for granted and are rarely aware of. These aspects of an organisational culture might be discernible to outsiders or not.

As organisational culture significantly affects the morale and engagement of the organisation’s members, it is generally seen as a key contributor to an organisation’s performance.

This tool is meant to be used to turn people’s focus inwards on their own organisation. It will help explore how synchronised are the espoused organisational values, such as those found in a vision and mission, with any collective behaviour patterns which members might explicitly highlight. An inconsistency between explicit values and what manifests in daily interactions at the work place can be a source of discontent and stress for members. If members similarly perceive a coherence in values, it tends to strengthen identification with an organisation’s goals and the overall level of engagement.

The overall approach of this tool is to compare explicit values, as mentioned in key documents or communication output, with observations and deeper insights from interviews on how values are manifested in everyday organisational life. Two models can then be used to conceptualise and describe the organisational culture.

As with any model, this work will not end with a representation of reality, but will serve as a tool to start conversations, compare views and perspectives and elicit discussions and visions about possible directions for future development.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Raising the awareness of a team about the different elements that form the fabric of their organisational culture. Providing images and practices that encourage conversation about dissonances arising from perceived conflicts between actual ways of doing things and declared values. Helping to develop measures to increase consistency in values.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Reflective work in exploring personal values and collective behaviour patterns; at the same time a strong focus on relationship building when facilitating exchange within a team about the perceived culture and the desired direction of culture change.

Application in moderation cycle: Divergence (inviting different perspectives) to emergence (deep insights that come up as part of the process) through to convergence (drawing conclu-sions on envisaged culture and measures to support it).

Duration: Half day to several days.

Group Size: Small to mid-sized groups. For larger groups it is suggested to split up into sub-groups and either divide tasks or compare different findings.


Level of difficulty: Difficult.

Facilitator: Support by an external facilitator is recommended as talking about one’s own organisational culture can be quite difficult and sensitive at times.

Materials needed: Flipchart paper, markers, possibly facilitation cards.

Additional resources: The classic publication about organisational culture: Schein, Edgar, Organizational Culture and Leadership, Wiley (5th Edition): 2016

Good overview on different aspects of organisational culture: https://www.managementstud-yguide.com/organization-culture.htm

Online tools for developing organisational culture: https://blogin.co/blog/25-online-tools-for-building- company-culture-56/

A funny little video that can be used as a teaser to discuss about what organisational culture is and how it forms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6LUg-siJVs


1. Generally introducing the concept of organisational culture.

2. Collecting key documents or communication outputs such as the vision, mission, statements on the website, organisational profiles or sets of guidelines: all to be scanned for explicitly- mentioned values.

3. Introducing the 'iceberg' and 'onion' models14. The iceberg model illustrates the idea that there are more visible and less visible elements of an organisational culture. It also emphasises the fact that the less visible elements by far surpass those elements that are more visible. This model can be used to generally introduce the concept of organisational culture.

4. The Onion Model again provides a framework for developing hypotheses regarding the actual culture of an organisation and how it has been formed. It is therefore used to conduct a culture analysis. The different layers of the onion are:

1. Visible surface, such as the physical environment, codes and practices.

2. Norms, rules, stated values.

3. Myths, individual histories, heroes, stories.

4. Core beliefs and values (what do we think about the world; how do we look at people and how they interact?)

5. The team collects information and data regarding all different levels. The fourth level of core beliefs, however, is difficult to directly observe or explore. Generally, the aim is to draw conclusions or come up with hypotheses that in turn can be crosschecked with other members of the organisation or with outsiders who know the organisation well.

6. Information and data gathering needs to be thoroughly planned for:

y How can we observe elements of the visible surface that tell us something about the culture of an organisation, what tells us about the culture of an organisation? This can include the overall layout of an office, the interior design, the way people greet each other, what clothes they wear, what atmosphere we sense when we walk into an office etc.

14 The Onion model presented here is actually a combination of the Hofstede Onion Model andthe Edgar Schein model on organisational culture.


https://www.managementstudyguide.com/organization-culture.htm

https://www.managementstudyguide.com/organization-culture.htm

https://blogin.co/blog/25-online-tools-for-building- company-culture-56/

https://blogin.co/blog/25-online-tools-for-building- company-culture-56/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6LUg-siJVs



y In order to dig deeper to the next levels, short interviews could be conducted with other representatives of the organisation not directly involved in this exercise, such as the founder, members of the Board, interns, administrative staff or external partners. The aim is to find out what explicit values and cultural traits members of the organisation highlight,

y but also collect data that point to customs, practices and the values behind them. It’s essential here to include a variety of different perspectives (organisation members representing different hierarchies, functional groups or length of engagement) and to consider what is needed to create a trustful environment.

y In developing guidelines for interview questions, key values that have been identified during the first step of this exercise are used. Observable indicators should be derived as comparison, such as: Communication patterns and feedback culture, the level of self-initiative, organisation and autonomy, decision-making patterns, practices for on- boarding new people, working hours (flexibility, level of over-time) etc.

7. The analysis of the collected data should look at three areas: a descriptive part (this is what we observed); hypotheses about the underwater parts of the iceberg or the inner elements of the onion; areas where possible discrepancies between declared and lived values have been found. It is important to stress here, that these hypotheses are always interpretations because organisational culture is a theoretical concept that can only be described based on personal perceptions. There is no objective form and description of organisational culture. Hence, in the end the concept of organisational culture serves to share and compare views, perceptions and experiences and provide a language to talk about often intangible phenomena.

8. The results of this analysis need to be presented and discussed with the overall organisation team in order to get feedback and validate what has been found.

9. The final step is to discuss how the organisation wants to deal with those areas where it was felt that declared values and actual behaviour patterns actually deviate from each other. The guiding question here is what can be changed to achieve more coherence between those values that we deeply care about and the ways in which we interact and function in the organisation.

The analysis of the collected data should look at three areas: a descriptive part (this is what we observed); hypotheses about the underwater parts of the iceberg or the inner elements of the onion; areas where possible discrepancies between declared and lived values have been found. It is important to stress here, that these hypotheses are always interpretations because organisational culture is a theoretical concept that can only be described based on personal perceptions. There is no objective form and description of organisational culture. Hence, in the


end the concept of organisational culture serves to share and compare views, perceptions and experiences and provide a language to talk about often intangible phenomena.

The results of this analysis need to be presented and discussed with the overall organisation team in order to get feedback and validate what has been found.

The final step is to discuss how the organisation wants to deal with those areas where it was felt that declared values and actual behaviour patterns actually deviate from each other. The guiding question here is what can be changed to achieve more coherence between those values that we deeply care about and the ways in which we interact and function in the organisation.

A side-note: Changing elements of organisational culture is not an easy endeavour. The famous monkey-banana experiment (which is a hypothetical experiment) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtbFrvUJVR8 is an illustration of how behaviour patterns form over time and are not being scrutinised or challenged any more. However, core beliefs that guide collective behaviour can also be changed over time by allowing new and different experiences to take root.

Options for modification: Basic options are that a team more or less independently conducts a culture analysis of its own organisation. The facilitator supports the design and implementation of the process as well as contributes to the analysis of the findings by bringing in a fresh external perspective. If the organisation has a long history, and behaviour patterns are seen as having become already deeply entrenched, or if a team is inexperienced in raising and discussing sensitive issues then the role of the facilitator might need to be more pronounced in supporting (or even conducting) some of the interview work. In the case of the later the role of the facilitator is also to focus strongly on mirroring back what he/she sees as implicit values and patterns.

Debriefing options: The debriefing of this exercise should focus on two things: how participants experienced the process and the exchange within the team and with the leadership about different observations and perspectives; and what happened within the team as a consequence of starting the conversation about lived values and patterns of interaction.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtbFrvUJVR8


Decision-Making Culture Analysis

Summary: In order to get a deeper understanding of decisions and how they are made in your organisation, this is a practical tool for analysing your experiences in the organisation. Anybody who is involved in decision-making in the organisation can propose an example. The analysis allows you to discover patterns and possible inequities in your decision-making and find ways to do it differently.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Understand your decision-making processes, discover hidden power dynamics.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Analysis, reflection. Application in moderation cycle: opening up, problem analysis.




Facilitator: The group process can be led internally. Ideally the facilitator has some general knowledge about decision-making processes. To ensure impartiality the facilitator should not participate in the process itself.

Materials needed: Flip-charts, facilitation cards.


1. Case narrative (around 10 minutes)

Case giver: Tell the story of a recent big strategic development in your organisation, which can be considered typical in its dynamics: How did it start? How did it develop? What is the current result?

Create a visual timeline detailing the key moments/milestones of that process.

Observers: Each pick one of the four perspectives listed in step 2. Listen to the story with special attention to that perspective. What are you curious about, what intrigues you when you listen with this special focus?

2. Drill into underlying dynamics (around 15 minutes)

Observers: Ask questions for deeper understanding from the point of view of your assigned perspective. Note key words and interesting quotes on the timeline.

y Actors: Who was involved in this process, and the related decisions, from within and outside the organisation? Who was not involved? Who took the lead; who was informed? Where was/is the ownership?

y Process: What was the relation between formal and informal arenas/settings in the process? How did the actual process reflect the strategic planning of the organisation? How were unexpected developments incorporated? Were there loops and redundancies in the process?

y Content: Which arguments/factors had strong weight in the process? Which principles were followed; which were compromised?


y Conflict: Where were points of conflict and how were they dealt with? Which issues were avoided; which parts were not implemented; which decisions were not taken? Was the decision-making process aiming for consensus, compromise, leadership authority, organised anarchy - or something else.

3. Identify Patterns and Consequences (around 20 minutes)

Integrated Analysis: Identify patterns in the process. Which features of the process are worth highlighting? Are there specific actions during the pre-decision phase that led to undesired results in the post-decision phase? What underlying dynamics were most relevant to the process? How can you describe the decision-making culture in this organisation?

Brainstorming: How can these patterns be adapted to make future strategy develop-ment more sustainable? End with a final reflection by the case giver.

Debriefing options:

y Contrast the decision-making process with your understanding of inclusive and fair decision- making. Does the process reflect the equality and participation you aspire to in your organisation?

y Share in the group how you felt in your role and if there were major insights you had. Can you apply your new understanding to other processes you are part of?

Decision-Making Culture Analysis


Stakeholder Analysis

Summary: This analysis sheds light upon the different people, groups or institutions that are somehow affected by or affect your work (they are henceforth called 'stakeholders'). It systematically analyses respective demands and interests. On the way to creating a more inclusive organisation, this tool can help you or your organisation to identify all the groups that are affected by actions and projects, and understand how they can or cannot influence these actions and projects.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Clearly identifying relevant people, groups and institutions for the organisation; developing a strategic focus on particular stakeholders.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Collective analysis, strategic conceptualisation, reflection.

Application in moderation cycle: Analysing the organisation’s relationships, opening up, divergence, clarifying.

Duration: 2–4 hours.

Group Size: 3–6 people (larger groups should be split for better outcomes).


Facilitator: Does not even require a clearly set facilitator role: the task can be self-directed by the group itself.

Materials needed: Pen and paper, optionally a flipchart.


Beginning

Stakeholders are groups, institutions and individuals who are to some extent affected by the organisation’s activities or who affect those activities. The stakeholder analysis is a system-atic approach to map the stakeholders’ interests and the assumed impact the organisation or a project has on each of them. This analysis can be a good start in understanding power dynamics and possible relations that cement exclusion,. Hence it is helpful to formulate a par-ticular intention with which to start the stakeholder analysis, such as 'We want to find out how to increase inclusion in our projects.' Later on, the stakeholders can be looked at individually when trying to change relationships to increase inclusion.

Step 1: Collecting. All stakeholders you can think of are written down and put onto a mindmap. During that process, they are clustered under agreed sub-groups. One example could be: donors, partners, col-leagues, clients.

Step 2: Analysis. Identify the interests of all stakeholders in relation to your organi-sation and the influence they have on you. Rank each interest and influence from 1–5 according to their intensity. Then take the

clients partners

organisation

colleagues donors


Stakeholder Analysis

top ten and analyse them in more depth. Doing this exercise in a group will show different opinions and sharpen understanding of the stakeholders through bringing different experi-ences and knowledge together.

Variation: Look at the power balance between stakeholders and your organisation – which player is more powerful and is that the way you want it to be? Also, look at the diversity of your stakeholders. Do they represent the diversity of your society when grouped together? Who are the powerful stakeholders?

Step 3: Strategy. Stakeholders that you identify as having strong interests and influence on you are the ones you can consider to invite into your processes. Others, less impactful ones, you might want to inform or consult. Developing a four-field-matrix with two axes can be helpful here: not interested or even sceptical <-> very interested; not so influential <-> highly influential. Develop strategies for how you want to relate with the key stakeholders you have identified. Is a change necessary? How would you like to shape the relationship in the future and what needs to be in place to do so?

Considerations: If you work with volunteers for example, they will have strong interests but not as much influence on the organisation. This might create a power imbalance that you could consider changing.

Debriefing options:

y Engaging with stakeholders often involves good communication, sometimes an increase in communication. Therefore, you can check if you have recurring patterns of communication. How could you streamline communication in a way that you can systematise it?

y What if you take on the position of one of your stakeholders – do they appreciate how the relationship to your organisation is shaped? If not, what could you offer them or change, in order to make the connection more balanced?


Six Field Analysis

Summary: The Six Field Analysis is a diagnostic framework, or as the creator Marvin Weisbord calls it, a 'cognitive map' used to assess strengths and weaknesses in the functioning of an organisation. It chooses six generic areas of organisations that are rated and analysed in more detail. However, in line with system’s thinking the effective interaction of all six areas is seen as a condition for a healthy and well-functioning organisation.

The proposed application of this tool is to first generate a snapshot by inviting all members of the organisation to rate those six areas. After revealing the results to everyone, a second step is used to analyse in more depth what individual assessments and perceptions stand behind the overall rating. The results of the analysis are fed back to the group to discuss possible conclusions and measures for improvement.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Bringing out the perspectives of all members of an organisation on the overall organisation’s performance. This is in the form of a snapshot, collaboratively analysing and agreeing what areas of the organisation need improvement. When repeatedly done the tool can also be used as an 'early alert' helping to detect early signs of problems or emerging discontent among the organisation’s members.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Analytical tool that helps to create a visual representation of individual assessments of an organisation as a basis for further discussion. It is not recommended for situations where there is already an open conflict.

Application in moderation cycle: Divergence to emergence.

Duration: 1.5 hours to half a day, depending on the group size and the intended depth of the diagnosis.

Recommended group size: Ideally, all members of an organisation should be involved. The tool can be adapted to all group sizes.


Facilitator: To conduct an organisational diagnosis an external moderator is recommended in order to bridge and integrate a variety of different perspectives. If it is not possible to involve a professional moderator, a senior person who is seen as a mentor or supporter of the organisation can lead the process.

Materials needed: Flipchart paper, markers.


1. Preparation: The most important preparation is to ensure that members of the organisation are willing to conduct a diagnosis of the organisation, and will contribute to it.

2. General introduction and explanation of the tool to the team. First, the six fields or basic criteria for assessment need to be understood:

Goals: How well the organisational purpose (vision/mission) is understood by everyone, is coherent and fits with the organisation’s competences;

Structures: The bigger picture of power relationships between employees and formal relationships between functional groups. This will show who is ultimately responsible


for achieving the goals in an organisation, and the alignment between structure and processes; Recognition: Incentive mechanisms in an organisation (what behaviour is rewarded and how); Relationships: Team dynamics, communication and collaboration within the organisation; Resources/technical systems: Communication pathways, policies and procedures as well as planning, budgeting and controls;

Leadership: Who are leaders in the organisation, how have they got there and how effective are they at the tasks for which they are responsible (such as: keeping these five different elements in balance);

3. Participants are then invited to rate these different areas of the organisation. Rating can be done anonymously, for instance on a scale between one and six (in order to avoid the tendency to choose the middle rating). The results of the assessment should then be presented to the whole group.

4. Depending on the overall atmosphere and conditions in the team the results could be discussed directly in the plenary. However, in order to provide room for more profound discussion, another option is to split up in small groups to discuss the background of the ratings.

5. The results of the group discussion are brought back to the plenary to be validated, crosschecked and further enriched with additional perspectives.

6. The final step is to collaboratively draw conclusions on how to deal with critical feedback that came up during the assessment and develop suggestions for improvement.

Options for modification: The process described above is just one way of using the diagnostic framework. In principle, it offers a number of different lenses through which to look at, sort and label what is going on in an organisation. This framework can also be translated into a questionnaire that is filled in by every member of the organisation; or assessment of the different fields could be explored through individual interviews, simply discussed in small groups, or further adjusted in many different ways.

The key for using this tool is to ensure there is an overall atmosphere of mutual trust where feedback is not used to blame and attack individual people, but also where leadership is ready to receive and constructively deal with any critical feedback.

Debriefing options: Final debriefing questions would above all be related to evaluating the overall process of conducting the organisational diagnosis, the quality of open discussions as well as the commitment to follow-up action.

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Six Field Analysis


Paradox Intervention – Plan An Exclusive Workshop/

Exchange Programme

Summary: In this exercise, participants are asked to conceptualise a workshop or exchange programme (depending on what fits for the context) that is specifically designed to exclude a particular group of people. With this seemingly odd task, the participants get a feeling about which factors play a role in marginalisation. Subsequently, they reflect about how they may be excluding people without being aware of it and what they could do differently.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Awareness of unintended exclusion, ideas of how to make the organisation more inclusive.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Conceptualising, paradox learning through exaggeration of the unintended, reflection of complex processes.

Application in moderation cycle: Opening up, sensitising.




Facilitator: Either internal or external, preferably with knowledge about structural dis-crimination. Sometimes, with tools like this one, we cannot know what we trigger in partici-pants. Therefore, you should be prepared to deal with emotions or reactions they have not expected.

Materials needed: Flipchart.

Additional resources: Taken from Barefoot Guide 5, page 90: https://www.barefootguide.org/uploads/1/1/1/6/111664/bfg- 5-mission_inclusion-final.pdf

Process description: The exercise begins with the task of designing a workshop or an exchange programme. Choose which one of those you ask them to do, according to the work-ing context of the group and the one with which they are more familiar. They have to make sure that they design it in such a way that, for example, no women can participate in it. Or you take any other group that is excluded in your society. If you are a large group, you can also work in sub-groups of 3–5 people, each one excluding a different group from the workshop or exchange programme. Each sub-group gets around 15–20 minutes to come up with a design. Questions that support the process could ask 'What time and how long should it be?', 'How should the invitation be written?' etc.

When the sub-groups concisely present their designs, ask them especially for the underlying mechanisms for exclusion that they identified. Afterwards, invite them to re-design their workshop or exchange programme and make it as inviting for the excluded group as possible. Give them another 15 minutes to do that.

Now ask people what they have done in their real organisation to make their workshops or exchange programmes more inclusive and let the whole group reflect on this in a group discussion. Eventually, gather some of the insights and immediate actions that they can use for more inclusive designs.

https://www.barefootguide.org/uploads/1/1/1/6/111664/bfg- 5-mission_inclusion-final.pdf


Debriefing options:

y Reflect upon the emotional reactions of the participants to designing an exclusive workshop/exchange process. There might be quite a variety of seemingly contradictory emotions such as excitement and disgust at the same time. Carefully acknowledge that this is also just human and ask what conclusions participants draw from that.

y What are other programmes, workshops, events etc. that people can think of (not necessarily offered by themselves) that exclude groups in their design? How could they be set up differently to become more inclusive?

Paradox Intervention – Plan An Exclusive Workshop/Exchange Programme


Summary: Open Space is a conferencing method, which builds on the realisation that self-organised communication and informal exchange is often much more fruitful than centralised, structured communication. The method activates participants’ creativity and builds on their motivation and self- determination – there is no agenda or pre-defined content, just a transparent set of rules and a clear schedule.

Open Space therefore consists of detailed steps that have proved to provide ample room for participants to bring up their own topics and concerns and then work on them collectively, including concrete follow-up planning.

An Open Space can be held with groups as small as 15 to 20 people in a 1–2 day setting, but has also been successfully applied with up to 1000 participants.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Enabling a group of people to organise themselves in bringing up the issues they care about, and develop self-organised solutions.

Way/level of dealing with subject: Actively engage in solving burning issues and create ownership over processes.

Application in moderation cycle: Divergence to convergence.

Duration: A minimum of one day up until 3 days (if following the 'classical' model).

Group size: A minimum of 15–20 people, open ended.


Facilitator: The ideal Open Space facilitator is 'fully present and totally invisible', 'holding a space' for participants to self-organise rather than micro-managing activity and conversations. The role of the facilitator is to invest a lot into detailed preparation, convey a spirit of empowerment, guide participants through the different steps and let the process unfold.

Materials needed: The ‘bible’ of Open Space (see below) provides a detailed list of materials needed. This includes pinboards, flipchart stands and paper, markers, moderation cards, etc.

Additional resources: Owen, Harrison (2008). Open Space Technology: A User's Guide. San Francisco, Calif: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

https://www.openspaceworld.com/ (Harrison Owen’s website)

https://openspaceworld.org

http://www.liberatingstructures.com/25-open-space-technology/: Good and brief overview of the process steps and logistics to consider


1. Preparation

The Open Space host identifies a central issue beforehand and invites participants accordingly. The title best represents a future-oriented open question, which is relevant and exciting for the participants. As participants need to be drawn to the event by the title and their individual interest, the quality of the title and the invitation is crucial.

Open Space

https://www.openspaceworld.com/

https://openspaceworld.org

http://www.liberatingstructures.com/25-open-space-technology/


2. Coffee Break

One focus of Open Space is to ensure that relationship- building between participants can take place. Therefore, before the official opening there is supposed to be plenty of informal time to connect and chat, and for people to meet new or known colleagues.

3. Collecting Issues

The Open Space itself starts in a circle with an introduction to Open Space - what it is and how it works - by the Open Space facilitator. The general structure is to;

y Collect issues proposed by the participants that will be put up for discussion and to have.

y At least three rounds of small group discussions of 45 to 120 minutes covering the issues collected from the participants so that everyone is able to participate in a number of different working groups.

Based on the amount of participants and the available space, time slots together with an assigned location (such as separate rooms or designated circles of chairs) for the different working groups are marked on small post-it’s. For a group of 40 participants, for instance, there should at least be 4 to 6 locations available to hold parallel working groups. This would allow for a total of 12 to 18 time slots.

Then the facilitator opens the so-called 'Market Place': She/he invites anyone who cares about an issue to step into the middle of the circle and write the topic and his or her name on an A4 sheet, choose a post-it with a time slot, announce it and post the offering on a pinboard. They will be convenors who have the responsibility for facilitating their session(s) and seeing to it that a report is made, using a prepared report template.

4. Discussions

The participants decide, according to their interest, to join an individual working group. The groups are working in parallel. Different from usual working group processes, participants are encouraged to change groups during the rounds of group work – in case they realise they can neither benefit from nor contribute to the current group ('the law of two feet'). Key arguments and outcomes are documented using a one-page template. These reports are later copied for all participants and a specific time slot after the third rounds of working groups is reserved for reading all the groups’ results.

5. Action Planning

After a short outcome review follow up activities and projects are decided upon – again in small groups. Their implementation can be monitored and supported by follow-up measures.

The most important aspect and condition for the success of an Open Space is thorough preparation. You need to meet the interests and aspirations of the target group. Then they will a) come and b) participate by actively asking their questions and showing interest. If expectations are not met, the exercise will be a lame duck, as the key – self-organisation – requires self-interest, which will not be generated.

Options for modification: A fully-fledged Open Space takes 3 days as outlined above. However, the general principle of self-organised working groups based on proposed issues from participants can also be done in a more condensed version.

Open Space


Debriefing options: At the end of every Open Space, there should be a final debriefing of how participants experienced the process and what they took from it in term of personal encounters, discussions or follow-up agreements.

Open Space


Summary: In every social setting there are implicit hierarchical differences between people. These differences are created by society and the values attributed to social status, education, origin, language etc. In part, they can also be ascribed to different competences or characteristics people have, such as social intelligence, persuasiveness, empathy, intuition, humour, dedication etc.

In organisations such hierarchical differences are only in part created by formal organisational structures. People might also occupy a certain position or so-called rank according to informal power they hold, for instance, due to the length of time they have been part of the organisation, or being trusted by certain people or for having specific knowledge.

Being able to raise the topic of informal power, differences in rank and access to decision-making is a key issue when dealing with diversity, inclusion and racism in organisations. Higher ranks (implicit and explicit ones) usually come with certain privileges, access to resources or overall influence in decision- making. The rank somebody holds is always in relation to others and can change over time and in different situations.

When introducing the topic of informal power and influence as part of a change process, you can use this powerful and playful method to let people feel what is meant by power differences, occupying different ranks and to being on different steps on the ladder of hierarchy.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Sensitising participants to the difficult topic of power relations and differences in rank in organisations, making it accessible and serving as an 'icebreaker' to then start a conversation about it.

Way/level of dealing with subject: Facilitating personal experience, triggering reflection, sensitisation towards abstract concepts.

Application in moderation cycle: Divergence to emergence.


Group size: 8 to 20 people.


Facilitator: The facilitation of the rank exercise to trigger reflection about power relations is not very complex and can be done by internal facilitators. However, if this exercise is used as an opener to start conversations about access to decision-making and formal and informal power relations then this needs an experienced external facilitator who has the trust of the team and is respected by executive members of the organisation.

In the latter case, this exercise has the potential to unlock strong emotional responses resulting from experiences of inequality or powerlessness. The facilitator needs to be prepared to deal with such responses.

Material needed: A deck of cards, the number of cards selected depending on the number of participants; rubber bands that fit around the head (can be made out of sewing rubber band that is soft on the skin)

Additional resources: Additional theoretical input on ranks:

Rank Exercise


Rank Exercise

Mindell, Arnold, Sitting in the Fire: Large Group Work Transformation Using Conflict and Diversity, Deep Democracy Exchange: 2014.

http://processconsulting.org/publications

Rank and the Worldwork News Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKG4EUD2z5E (found on the website of Arnold and Amy Mindell: http://www.aamindell.net where there are also other resources).

Diamond, Julie, Power: A User’s Guide, Belly Song PR: 2016.

Julie Diamond on Positive Threats, Risky Comfort and the Challenge of Rank in Learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbiIvrTwSYA


1. Preparation: You will need a regular card deck (ideally from 2 to ace, without duplicates – which group is not bigger than 14 people) and make sure everyone knows and has the same understanding of the hierarchical order of the cards, including the different colours. (You choose the number of cards according to the number of participants. Include also one joker into the card set which implies that this person operates outside of the hierarchical system).

2. Let everyone pick a card from the deck, with the cards face down so no one is allowed to know his or her own card. Everyone has to attach the card to their own forehead using rubber bands, so that the others can see the card and only the carrier doesn’t know what is on it. When everyone has a card attached, they start moving around the room and look at each other’s cards without speaking. The facilitator instructs the group to non-verbally interact in order to find out their own rank relative to the others.

3. Tell the group that they have to form a ranking line where everyone has to position himself or herself according to where they believe they are in the card game hierarchy. Still, people are not allowed to talk or indicate to others where they should stand. Once everyone is sure about their position, everyone can take off their card and look at it.

Options for modification: This exercise strongly sensitises participants to the topic of ranks. A possible next step is to then turn the attention towards the participants’ own organisation and reflect on how ranks are dealt with there. Relevant questions would be: How do I experience different ranks in my organisation?; How do I perceive my own rank in the organisation?; How do I feel about it and is there anything I would like to change? These questions could ideally be explored in pairs using a ‘deep listening’ approach: both group members get a defined amount of time to speak (usually between 5 and 8 minutes) while the other person is only listening. At the end, the listener can give feedback or mirror back what he or she heard and understood. Then roles are exchanged. As a final step, the pairs should be invited to share in the plenary some of their insights or personal evaluations of this reflection and dialogue.

http://processconsulting.org/publications

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKG4EUD2z5E

http://www.aamindell.net

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbiIvrTwSYA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbiIvrTwSYA


Debriefing options: The debrief to this exercise – which should take place before the partner dialogue described under 'options for modification' - can take quite some time, since there are many power- related issues in an organisation. The facilitator uses prompting questions and ensures a lively discussion within the group. To start with the initial questions should still be quite general, such as:

How did it feel doing this exercise? How did you find out about your own rank; what were the signals you noticed?

Secondly, move on to more specific questions: How did it feel to be in higher ranks, how in lower? It’s always interesting to ask the person with the lowest rank what his/her experience was, how she/he perceived the reactions of the others, how it felt.

Then ask those in the middle and higher positions. It is also interesting to explore the role of the joker: what was he/she able to do? How did it feel, what potential does this role have?

Generally, applying these insights to their own organisation comes quite naturally; for instance, when people draw a link to a person they have noticed operating outside of existing hierarchies as if he were a joker.

Part of the debriefing should also be to give a bit of theoretical background about ranks (e.g. use the resources quoted above), in particular emphasising that ranks are neither good or bad, and that they are always at play, especially in organisations that claim to have no hierarchies. Second, it’s usually much easier to be aware of low rank positions, but it’s particularly important to be aware of a high rank position in order to use the attached power and influence wisely and responsibly. Power abuse happens when people are unaware of the power and the responsibilities attached to their high rank position.

Rank Exercise


Chopstick Exercise

Summary: This exercise serves as an opener to introduce and reflect on the topic of leadership in organisations, personal preferences and characteristics in a leadership position, as well as what leadership means for a team.

It can also be used as an energiser.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: The participants personally experience aspects of leading another person, triggering reflection about what it means to be leading others as well as to be led.

Way/level of dealing with subject: Experimentation and reflection.

Application in moderation cycle: Divergence.

Duration: 15 to 30 minutes including debriefing.

Group size: 6 participants as a minimum, but it can also be done in big groups of 30 to 40 people, provided that the room is big enough for the number of participants to move freely around the room.


Facilitator: This exercise can be done by both internal and external facilitators. The actual exercise is very simple and does not need a lot of explanation. The most important part is the debriefing afterwards which involves creating the space from which participants can draw deeper meanings from the exercise.

Materials needed: The same number of chopsticks as there are participants. Additional resources: Enough space to move freely.


1. Participants form pairs (if the number of participants is uneven the facilitator participates in the exercise) who face each other.

2. Each pair is given two chopsticks. The task is to hold the two chopsticks in the air by both pressing their index fingers against one end of the chopstick. Then the pairs are asked to move around the room without letting the chopsticks fall down to the floor – and without talking to each other.

3. The exercise is done in three rounds. During the first round of approximately 2–3 minutes, one person takes responsibility for not letting the sticks


fall to the floor.

4. In the second round, the other person takes on that role.

5. During the third round both partners agree to share the responsibility of not letting the chopstick fall to the floor while moving around the room.

Debriefing options: There are a lot of insights that can be gained from the debriefing of this exercise and by drawing the basic link to leadership. The first is that there are individual differences in how comfortable people feel in the role of leader or someone who is being led. For some people it might be very difficult to give up control and completely tune into the non-verbal communication with their partner. It’s also interesting to compare the different approaches towards leading the other – whether it’s by eye contact or mainly by pressure – or if the collaboration at some point turns into a dance-like movement where pairs gently and creatively explore new ground.

Another difference to explore is the experience of leading alone or feeling a shared responsibility.

About the general nature of leadership, this exercise offers the reflection that leadership can only work with the support and consent of those who are led: it is always a joint endeavour. Secondly, a basic level of resistance by those who are led is essential for leaders as orientation and source of information, as well as to establish some kind of balance. Without any resistance, guidance easily pushes over limits and becomes ineffective.

This exercise is thus an excellent way to start reflection and discussion about how leadership works in an organisation, highlighting the collective not merely the individual responsibility that is actually behind it.

The debriefing can then also be used to connect with a theoretical framework for dividing authority and responsibility between leaders and team. See Method Description 6: Continuum of Power Distribution.

Chopstick Exercise


Guerrilla Gardening

Summary: Guerrilla Gardening originally described the act of gardening a piece of land without having the legal right to do so. It is usually seen and done as a subversive act of protest, something small yet impactful, that seeks to provoke change.

Transferred into the world of organisations it is used as an approach towards organisational change that also starts informally.

Guerrilla Gardening as a concept can thus be understood as a subversive approach to organisational change. Rather than changing culture from the top with a great proclamation, the idea is that anyone can start cultural change anywhere in the organisation, even in areas that have been rather neglected so far by building practical small-scale examples of the desired future. It focuses on triggering communication on desired change that supports the concept of emergent change – change that takes place through discourse and new ways of communication rather than in a planned and controlled fashion.

Hence, Guerrilla Gardening is about developing creative and feasible ideas for action that are examples of what an envisaged change might look like. The act itself might surprise colleagues and co-workers, and spark and inspire open discussion or follow up developments at a bigger or more profound scale.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Developing creative yet doable small-scale interventions and ideas that spark open discussions and have the potential to motivate change at a larger scale.

At the same time, this approach has an empowering effect as it can be applied by everybody in the organisation, supporting the basic notion that everybody 'can start a revolution'.

Way/level of dealing with subject: Visionary and creative work, generating new ideas and new ways to look at organisational culture and change; triggering communication within a small team.

Application in moderation cycle: Emergence – the phase when new ideas and solutions surface.

The approach is overall a very creative and action-focussed one. It is thus more suited to moments of creating ideas.

Duration: Between 45 minutes and 120 minutes.

Group size: No limitation for overall group size to introduce the concept. Concrete Guerrilla Gardening idea development needs small groups of two up to a maximum of five people.


Facilitator: Internal or external facilitator able to give some inspiring examples and guide the group in such a way that they are open for some creative work.

Materials needed: Flipchart paper, markers and crayons in different colours, all kinds of creative material.

Additional resources: http://www.guerrillagardening.org.

http://www.guerrillagardening.org


Example introductory flipchart (see next page).


1. Guerrilla Gardening should generally be part of a multiple step process. Preceding the introduction of the concept might be an overall situation analysis exploring the current situation. This might reveal reasons why there is a need for some kind of organisational change, lead to insights that organisational culture needs to be part of an envisaged change process, or help to understand different aspects of the organisational culture.

2. Introducing the general idea of Guerrilla Gardening. It’s helpful to start with the original concept and history of how it was developed. Cite some basic principles for the 'Urban Guerrilla Gardener', e.g.

y Find an uncared-for peripheral piece of land, a wall, a tree - best in your own neighbourhood.

y Decide what you want to plant and check if your choice makes sense. Tough plants and fast-growing flowers are a good start.

y It’s more fun together – find partners. Talk to friends and neighbours.

y Build your garden. Possibly you need to bring some fertile soil and water the plants after planting.

y It may be wise to protect your garden from the challenges of city life, possibly with an improvised little fence against dogs and feet.

y Care for your garden with love! Go regularly and water it.

y If things go differently than planned, don't lose faith! Talk to residents! Most of them will like your action and at least give you moral support. Some may even join you!

y You will find other principles online.

3. After the discussion of the original concept, translate it to the world of organisations. The group then splits up into small working groups. Participants should use a variety of different creative materials to inspire experimentation with ideas, not just being analytical but also intuitive. Alternatively, the working groups could go on a walk together as a first step for applying the concept to their own organisation and come up with first ideas.

4. Guerrilla Gardening ideas should somehow be documented – either in the form of a drawing or a three-dimensional arrangement.

5. Ideas will then be fed back into the large group, asking for feedback.

6. The last step would be a more in-depth discussion on how to operationalise the ideas, following some of the basic principles of Guerrilla Gardening (see above).

Options for modification: The Guerrilla Gardening model can also be used in the context of conceptualising the envisaged impact strategy of a project. In the classical impact-oriented approach of project development there is a hierarchy of change processes triggered by a project. While a project is generally only accountable for accomplishing its direct project objectives (the outcome level of a project), there is nevertheless a need to at least discuss and conceptualise the extent to which a project is expected to contribute to higher-level social change (impact level). Here, Guerrilla Gardening could be one possible approach as compared to the more standard idea of quantitatively scaling-up (innovative) pilot projects or influencing political framework conditions to spark systemic change.

Guerrilla Gardening


Debriefing options: The main debriefing would usually take place while presenting the ideas and receiving the feedback from fellow participants. A final debriefing could relate more to the basic concept, how helpful it is to think about culture change in such a way and how participants experienced the energy in the group while working creatively (and possibly) with their hands.

Example flipchart to introduce the original idea of Guerilla Gardening:

Guerrilla Gardening


Caucuses

Summary: Caucuses are a tool for people who have had similar experiences connected to discrimination. Groups who share similar experiences get together to speak about them and related issues. Separate caucuses could for instance be created by people of colour and white people, who would then discuss issues regarding discrimination within the organisation. Although a potentially discriminating group such as white people may address the topic quite differently from those who have experienced discrimination, their caucus is just as important for self-reflection. If there is more than one group then each group can decide what they want to share with the other groups.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Empowerment to stand up against discriminatory behaviour, detecting own discriminatory behaviour, connecting to others with similar experiences.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Exchange of stories, self-reflection.

Application in moderation cycle: Opening up, sensitising, looking for solutions.

Duration: 1–2 hours, happening periodically.

Group Size: 4–15 people per caucus group.


Facilitator: Internal, someone who shares the same experiences as the group. You will need to be able to remain emotionally calm when painful experiences are shared and to create a safe, trusting environment among the group.

Materials needed: No materials needed.

Process description: Caucuses are created for two reasons. First, to empower people, through sharing their stories and experiences, to have a look at organisational issues that are associated with discriminatory behaviour, relations and structures. Second, to explore possibilities for identifying and changing any structures that support discriminatory behaviour. Empowering can encourage people to stand up against discrimination, even if they belong to the potentially discriminating group. They can then hold each other accountable, within their caucus and beyond, for any discrimination they see.

You structure the caucus session roughly into three parts:

1. Participants share stories of discrimination they have experienced. Please bear in mind that these might be emotional moments which you need to manage.

2. Discuss possible reasons why such experiences became possible (try to be precise here, not going into a very general discussion, but narrow it down as much as you can).

3. Think about possible ways to change the circumstances so that the shared experiences of being discriminated have less chance to occur again.

The discussion covers both the change that is required within the organisation/team etc. as well as the participants’ experiences with discrimination. This needs suitable questions to stimulate the caucus’ discussion, according to the context in which they are in.


Caucuses

Options for modification: The format is very flexible. You can have it as a one-off session within a workshop, where you would tell the group to divide itself according to a pre-set identifier (eg gender). However, a regular meeting might prove to be more effective because groups need a few meetings to build trust and come up with new ideas.

Debriefing options:

y Ask for individual reflection: how can we transfer the insights we had from the shared stories into our everyday life?

y Find a little ritual to closure the caucus (especially if you meet regularly), in which you reiterate the purpose of the meetings.


Peer Group Consulting

Summary: Peer group consultation is a tool to support members of a team or an organisation to cope professionally with challenges in their daily work. In the circle of colleagues, 'problems' from their own practice will be presented. The different perspectives, hypotheses and ideas from the other group members will help people to get a better idea of the given situation and then develop new ideas for possible action. A major feature of this method is the gradual progression, where there is no direct jump to solutions but a proper process that eventually leads there, allowing for more thorough understanding and thus better solutions. The method requires a relationship of trust among the people involved and confidentiality about everything that happens.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Bring more clarity into a difficult situation, find a variety of ways to deal with a particular problem.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Collective analysis, reflection, consulting.

Application in moderation cycle: Convergence, applying newly acquired knowledge or competencies.


Group Size: 5–8 people (larger groups can easily be split).


Facilitator: Internal or external, needs to keep a close eye on the structure, time and that people do not suggest solutions too early.

The time-pressure is both helpful (to achieve relevant feedback in a short time) and challenging (to really focus on the issue). Of course, the schedule can be adapted to the given situation and maybe also to the number of participants in the room. However, the schedule should be explained and be clear to all participants.

Materials needed: a timer or stopwatch for the facilitator, optionally a flipchart.


BeginningDepending on the size of your group, you could create sub-groups for the different cases to be talked about. Before splitting into sub-groups those people who want to present cases summarise their case in two sentences so that people can choose themselves which topic attracts them the most. A good size for one sub-group is 4–7 people plus the case giver. Select one person in each sub-group to be in charge of the time-keeping and keeping an eye on the rules.

1. Introduction (5 min)The 'coachee' (or case-giver) gives a more in-depth presentation of their case, explaining some of the key facts and the narrative of their problem. If the case is a bit more complicated, use the help of a flipchart. At the end of the presentation, the coachee asks a question of the group. This could be something like 'What options do I have to deal with my situation?' or 'Is the way I am planning to deal with my situation the best choice?'


Peer Group Consulting

2. Questions from the group (5 min)

Now the group can ask questions for clarification and further details that they deem necessary to fully understand the case. Make sure not to allow questions that are suggesting solutions (solutions in disguise), such as 'did you consider to do this and that?', in order not to jump to solutions at this point. The coachee waits for all questions to come and can take some notes.

3. Clarifications (3 min)

Now the coachee gives additional information in response to what was asked by the group. In situations of time-pressure it is the case-giver’s decision which questions to prioritise.

4. Discussion and building hypotheses (10 min)

The group is trying to understand the situation, discussing what they understood from the coachee’s presentation and what they observe when they look at the situation. They provide feedback and share their reactions to what they heard. The coachee sits still and listens while the group discusses their case. The group members talk to each other as if the coachee was not even around. Still, there are no solutions allowed, which needs to be managed by the one in charge of rules.

5. Backstopping (3 min)

Now it is time for the coachee to give feedback: which of the hypotheses and ideas given by the group resonated with them. This gives the group a direction to follow when they start thinking about solutions in the next step.

6. Development of ideas and solutions (7 min)

The group jointly looks for ways, possibilities and ideas for how the coachee’s initial question can be properly answered. This can involve a variety of proposals, which the coachee can choose from as they wish. Again, the coachee remains in the role of a quiet observer and takes notes if applicable.

7. Final reflection (3 min)

Every peer-consultation ends with the case-giver having the final words. They can indicate which of the solutions they want to follow and what would be their next steps. It is really up to the coachee to choose what they want to say in this reflection.

Debriefing options:

y Ask for individual reflection: which of the insights and solutions for the particular case could also be useful for others’ own situations?

y Ask in the group: how could the method be useful for our respective work?


Convergence: From Ideas To Preparing Decisions

Summary: Convergence is what needs to take place in group processes after all perspectives, opinions and ideas have been voiced and discussed. It’s the next logical step to make sense of a multitude of individual thoughts, turn it into something 'owned' by the entire group and ultimately enable the group to act. The process flow from divergence to convergence could take the following form:

Divergence: What are all the problems we could work on?

Convergence: This is the best.

Divergence: What are all the contributors of the problem?

Convergence: This one is the most significant.

Divergence: What are all the possible ways of fixing it?

Convergence: This one is the cheapest.

Hence, convergence is about seeking a conclusion and closure of a topic. It can consist of a variety of steps, including to:

1. Organise everything that has been collected before according to different criteria or under different headers (building so-called clusters or clustering).

2. Sharpen concepts and thoughts, e.g. by also making any differences between them more explicit and apparent.

3. Rank or prioritise topics or ideas according to agreed criteria.

4. Vote on different options or clusters of ideas in order to create a ranked list.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Facilitate in a transparent way the selection of a few ideas/suggestions out of the many that have been compiled and developed by the group. In this way, prepare for decision-making and agreement on concrete follow-up steps.

Way/level of dealing with subject: Actively participate in narrowing down and selecting contributions by all group members as well as participate in decision-making.

Application in moderation cycle: Convergence.

Duration: Overall, it is safe to assume that convergence needs roughly a similar amount of time as the preceding divergence phase.

Group size: Small- to mid-sized group.


Facilitator: Internal as well as external moderators can apply convergence methods in their group facilitation. It needs some experience and some sensitivity to underlying and implicit group dynamics so as to ensure that conclusions are not reached too quickly following the most vocal members of the group, but really supporting a collaborative thinking and decision-making process that is inclusive of all participants.

Materials needed: Depending on the choice of methods: Post-it notes, moderation cards, sticky dots, markers.



Additional resources: Kaner, Sam (2007), Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, John Wiley & Sons inc.: 2nd Edition.


1. Clustering:

y Prior to clustering there has usually been a step where a variety of opinions, suggestions or ideas were collected, e.g. through brainstorming. This step, part of divergence, might have used moderation cards or post-it notes so that everybody in the room was able to contribute to the generation of ideas. The precondition for clustering is that no more than one idea is written on one card or post-it.

y Clustering is most easily done with post-it notes, as the position of each post-it can be changed many times in order to ultimately come up with a cluster with which everyone is satisfied.

y There are two basic approaches in clustering: either participants themselves do it or the facilitator makes a suggestion and asks the group to confirm or validate the proposed logic of clustering.

y Variations of participant clustering:

1. One participant after another reads out his/her card or post-it, walks up and pins it on the wall. After the first, the following participants immediately start creating clusters when they add their cards to the wall. Once the different clusters have formed there can be a facilitated discussion about different options for the clusters including appropriate headers for the different clusters.

2. Participants walk up and hang all their cards or post-it notes simultaneously. The facilitator numbers the cards. Then participants are invited to shout out the numbers of two cards they believe belong together. This is repeated until participants get the hang of it and group pairs together until the clusters grow. If a card could go into two different clusters, the facilitator makes a copy of it and puts it into both. Check if people want to amalgamate any of the clusters to get the number of clusters down a bit. It does not often work, but keeps the debate at high energy and starts the clarification process. The final task is to name the clusters.

3. Participants put all their sticky notes on the wall. They are invited to move the cards around in order to group related ideas into themes. All of this is done silently. Anyone may relocate a sticky from one cluster to another. Thus, ideas move back and forth until everyone accepts the categorisation. Finally, the title of each cluster is discussed and agreed.

y Involving participants in clustering has many advantages as it helps to clarify the different perspectives that are behind abbreviated statements. However, this can sometimes be time- consuming and overstretch the attention span of the participants. Another option is that the facilitator takes over the clustering, for instance during a coffee break, to come up with a suggested logic of clustering. He/she may also invite volunteers to help him/her in the grouping process. It’s key to then still get feedback from the group so they agree with the suggested clusters, and to find an appropriate title for it.


2. Sharpening concepts and differences

The basic idea of clustering is to look for similarities and connections between statements made. However, it is sometimes important not to jump too quickly in trying to create a consensus or harmonise between various statements, as underlying conflicts in opinions might be overlooked. These can come out later and seriously block the ongoing process of moving towards closure. Hence, before going into ranking or voting it might be helpful to draw the attention of the group towards clear differences in opinion and statements. Maybe there are ideas that are even mutually exclusive. Making this really clear to the participants allows them to take more conscious and well-informed decisions later.

3. Ranking/Prioritising

Ranking and prioritising can be done in many different ways.

One possibility is to go around the room and ask every participant about their personal priority or their three highest ranked options.

A more interactive approach is the so-called snowballing. All participants are grouped into pairs, discuss and agree their joint top or top three priorities. Then two pairs join and need to agree on their top priority list. After that two groups of four join again for their top priorities. This is done until the whole group is united. If no agreement can be reached, it’s likely there are more profound differences in opinion and needs that need to be explored and clarified in a different way.

4. Voting

Voting is a specific form of ranking. The easiest and most common way is done by using sticky dots. Participants might be given one sticky dot per person to indicate their top priority. This means that all items that receive unanimous or nearly unanimous support become the group’s high-priority list. The advantage is that choices reflect and make visible what people really feel.

Another option is to distribute between 3 and 5 sticky dots to each person. People can be allowed to allocate all of their dots to one item so that the relative distance between the ranked ideas usually becomes more visible.

Another variation is to combine the setting of priorities with the next step of distributing roles and responsibilities in planning follow-up steps. In this case participants first vote with sticky dots on their priority items. Secondly, they are given a differently-coloured sticky dot, the so-called passion point. The explicit question is 'which item do you not only consider (most) important, but you would also be ready to dedicate your time to work on'. Usually the number of 'high priorities' decreases.

Options for modification: In the overall process of convergence, coming to conclusions, decisions and follow-up agreements there is a general move towards narrowing down, condensing and filtering out those ideas that the group can agree on. It is recommended at certain decisive junctions to check that everybody is still on board or can at least subscribe to the overall direction. This can be done by asking for people’s consent (see method description Consent Moderation).

Consent is ultimately the right of veto, the option to opt out in case there are significant objections. It means not everybody has to fully agree with the proposed decision, but people are invited to state if they can live with it and are ready to go along. The way of running a circle of consent before an important decision is to ask everybody if they give their consent or if




anybody has significant objections. In case of objections justifiable reasons should be given. In that case, the following discussion aims to develop solutions to solve these objections.

Debriefing options: The debriefing would focus on the process of convergence, asking for feedback if the process was perceived as inclusive, fair and transparent and if everybody felt heard and included.

As convergence is extremely important for and indicative of the culture of decision-making and informal power relations in an organisation or team it is also interesting to consider what the group can learn from this process for future similar processes, what outsiders would notice, how it would compare to past decision-making processes.


Consent Decision Making

Summary: 'Consent' is a facilitative approach to support effective decision-making in groups as well as an underlying principle for collaborative governance. It’s one of the essential principles used in Sociocracy, an alternative governance system for organisations aiming to be inclusive and accountable towards all members of the organisation.

Consent complements other approaches to decision-making. While majority voting can potentially reinforce the position of the majority over the minority (those who have divergent opinions) consensus on the other hand aims to work towards decisions that everybody can identify with.

However, consensus-building sometimes leads to lengthy and tedious rounds of consultation, which potentially discourages initiative for action. Furthermore, the expectation that a group needs to unanimously agree on standpoints and take decisions can also exert considerable pressure on individuals to come to an agreement, submit to or short-cut the process.

The main question in consent decision-making is whether anyone has significant objections to a proposed decision. Giving consent means, there are no significant objections. It also means, 'I might not completely agree, yet I don’t completely reject the proposed decision either and can still go along.' Hence, even though there is no full agreement with a position or decision, giving consent allows the group to move forward with a decision. At the same time, it ensures that there is always the possibility for anybody to veto a decision. In case somebody has significant objections, the proposed decision has to be reconsidered and alternative solutions sought. If somebody has significant objections, it is in principal considered to reveal information about unintended consequences, or about viable ways to improve decision-making. It is therefore even considered the responsibility of individuals to bring potential objections to proposals, decisions, existing agreements or activities to the attention of the group.

This implies, that a given consent can also be withdrawn at any point in the process and objections be voiced.

The strength of consent as a mode of decision-making is therefore to make every voice heard and to enable everyone to voice a more nuanced opinion or position. Instead of simply agreeing or not agreeing consent states that a decision is 'good enough for now' or 'safe enough to try'. It can thus have a liberating and empowering effect on those who want to turn conversations into action.

Consequently, the role of a moderator in a consent decision-making process is not so much about structuring discussion, but ensuring that all voices are heard, one after another.

Introducing the principle of consent in organisations and teams changes the way decisions are made and ultimately has the potential to alter power relations.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Giving a voice to everybody in important decision-making, while enabling the group or team to act, and allowing those who want to act and take responsibility to move forward.

Way/level of dealing with subject under discussion: Offering a structured and accountable process for individual voices to be heard in decision-making.

Application in moderation cycle: Convergence.



Duration: Moderating a circle of consent could be done in as little time as 10 minutes or might, with the full sequence of the 4-step consent decision-making (see below) perhaps take an hour or more. This will depend on the group size and if there are contentious issues that need further discussion.

Group size: Applicable in small as well as big groups (maximum around 40).


Facilitator: Groups can decide to adopt the principle of consent when important or strategic decisions are to be taken. Moderators are usually elected from among the team members. The expectations towards a moderator are that he/she will lend her services to the group – but remains a member of the group with the right to voice an objection. The role needs the right balance between ensuring that the structure of the process will be followed, yet at the same time also allowing the process to unfold. A moderator from within the team will also need the courage to address and name the famous 'elephant in the room', those issues that possibly everyone is thinking about but no one is mentioning.

If consent decision-making is adopted as a routine practice, the role of the moderator usually rotates among the team members. The responsibility for the outcome and solution therefore lies with the whole team and everyone in the team – whatever their prior expertise in moderation – should get the chance to learn and practice how to moderate consent circles.

Materials needed: None.

Additional resources:

https://sociocracy30.org/the-details/principles/

On collaborative governance using the principle of consent: https://www.circleforward.us/

Two videos explaining consent and its process:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiMObe6ssR0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x80gDfkxwMw


1. When adopting a decision-making approach using consent it is usually agreed that all policy decisions are made by consent, whereas day-to-day operational decisions can still be done in a different manner.

2. Ideally, all team members sit in a circle. The topic that is to be decided has been communicated and agreed upon by the participants (e.g. we want to improve our meeting culture).

3. The process of consent moderation, according to the textbook, consists of four steps that are implemented in circles. This means everybody gets a turn to say something – or states that they have nothing to say:

y A first circle to collect information. Who needs what kind of information to be able to form an opinion?

y Opinion-forming circle(s): This can be done in two rounds: What is my opinion about the topic being discussed? And as a second round: What could be a good solution or the relevant criteria for finding a good solution?

y In the third step, it’s usually the role of the moderator to make a first attempt at formulating a solution based on what the group has expressed.

https://sociocracy30.org/the-details/principles/

https://www.circleforward.us/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiMObe6ssR0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x80gDfkxwMw


y The fourth circle is the actual consent circle. A conclusion or solution is put up for consent. The moderator asks everyone in the circle if he/she gives his/her consent. If everyone gives his/her consent the decision is adopted by the group.

If someone in the circle voices a significant objection, the moderator should be welcoming and help this person, as well as the rest of the group, to come to a deeper understanding of the underlying reasons and implications. Typical questions the moderator would ask are: What exactly do you object to? What perspectives and arguments are underlying this objection? Why is the objection significant to you? Do you have an idea about what is needed to better take your reservations into account? Is there an alternative solution you have in mind?

y After that, the rest of the group responds to the objection in the form of acknowledgement, possibly further questions to gain a better understanding or an active search for alternative solutions. Hence, this might be best done in the form of an open brainstorming or another round in the circle.

y Once an alternative solution has been found this is put up for consent again.

4. If the group experiences difficulties coming up with a decision that gets everybody’s consent, it might be helpful to emphasise that this decision is only taken for a limited amount of time and can, at the initiative of any group member, be revisited after some time. Another option could be to allow for the discussion to sink in and bring the circle back together after a few days. It could also be that the overall goal, what the group wants to achieve by this decision, needs to be revisited and checked again to be sure, there is really a common understanding and a consensus about that.

Options for modification: Consent can also be used as a basic principle without always conducting the formal 4-step process. In that case, if there are important decisions a moderator would ask for everybody’s consent. If this is given, a decision is considered adopted – with the general expectation that contested decisions should always be reviewed after some time and evaluated.

Debriefing options: A team that experiments with consent and is quite new to it should debrief after every decision taken in consent. The debrief should consider how the group feels about it, if the process was experienced as transparent, if everyone felt heard, if the group is satisfied with the outcome. It’s important to give some time for experimenting and reflecting about the difference between consent and other modes of decision-making.



Constellation Work

Summary: Constellation is a powerful mapping technique for surfacing hidden dynamics in human relationships. It may be used in both organisational and personal contexts. Hence, the different forms of constellation work is called family constellations, organisational or team constellations as well as structural constellations. Constellation work has its origins in systemic family therapy and psychodrama and was later introduced and adapted to the field of organisational development. It comes in many forms. In the original form, people are chosen to represent key persons and positions involved in a certain situation. They are positioned in the room and in relation to each other in order to represent a dynamic or the characteristics of how they relate to each other. Constellation work can also be done by using objects such as paper or wooden stones in different colours and shapes. The example we present here uses chairs that are usually arranged by a case-giver in the room and in relation to each other in order to represent a certain dynamic or particular situation.

Chairs are especially useful in mapping workplace-related structures, relationships or conflicts as they are a strong metaphor for positions that can be occupied by different people - but also be vacated again. Bystanders who study a constellation of chairs can usually give valuable feedback on the dynamics they observe. In addition, the chairs have the additional benefit that other people can be invited to sit in them, after they have been arranged, in order to explore and feed back on how it feels to be in the adopted position. The powerful aspect of this approach is that by representing another person or by sitting in a chair that represents a person or a position in a constellation it is mostly possible to feel, re-create and embody some of the behaviour or emotions of what the chair represents. It is astonishing how often and sometimes intensely, people 'pick up' something simply by taking a spatial position in relation to other positions or persons – even though they know neither the people nor the detailed background of the situation. Crucial elements such as proximity, distance, access or exclusion can be felt directly. Hence, people are, to a certain extent, able to speak from the position, which the chair represents. Equally, they can serve as a mirror for the case-giver and give new perspectives and insights.

Goal/Learning Objective/Expected Output: Exploring dynamics in human relations or structural problems; using a group as a mirror and for making sense of complex structural or relationship settings in organisations.

Way/level of dealing with subject at stake: Emotionally and intuitively, understand psychodynamics in organisational settings.

Application in moderation cycle: Emergence.

Duration: 30 min to 90 min.

Group size: Medium-sized groups (between 8 and 15 people).


Facilitator: Facilitating constellation work using chairs needs an experienced facilitator. First, constellation work can bring strong emotions to the surface. Moreover, they can direct the focus of the group and the case-giver, the facilitator should also have had some experience in ‘reading’ spatial arrangements through facilitating constellation work.


The constellation using paper as a resource (see short variation below) is easier to facilitate as it mostly doesn’t trigger these emotions.

Materials needed: A bunch of chairs (at least 6–10) that can also easily be stacked on top of each other.

Additional resources: Several interviews with Matthias Varga von Kibéd on YouTube.

The Principle of Feeling – The Method of Structural Systemic Constellations for Technical Problem Solving and Decision Making: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705815042575.

Interesting article in the New Yorker on the use of family constellation work in coming to terms with family histories from the Second World War: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/12/familienaufstellung-germanys-group-therapy.

Process description: The process description below assumes a situation where a case-giver presents a work-related situation to a group who are not part of that person’s organisation or at least not part of the described situation. This can be adapted for working internally with team constellations as well as by using other material.

1. The facilitator starts by doing a brief interview in front of all participants with the case-giver about the background and basic elements of the situation he or she wants to describe. It’s important at this point to keep the initial information really short and limited to the most basic information of what the case is all about, what or who is involved.

2. The case-giver arranges the chairs according to what feels right to him/her to represent the issue or situation in their case. Each chair can represent a person involved in the issue/situation, but could also represent a certain aspect or abstract topic relevant to the situation such as the common goal, money or the advisory board, the target group the organisation is serving, etc. The case-giver then sits down or steps aside and, in silence, checks that the entire arrangement feels right.

3. Now the rest of the group is invited to comment on what they see. It is important as a facilitator to ensure that this is about what the bystanders can sense, observe and perceive in terms of spatial relations and configurations, not how they interpret the story behind the arrangement. . As a second step, one or two selected persons are invited to test how it feels to sit in some of the chairs, what they intuitively sense in a certain position. When they voice negative emotions, the facilitator can invite them to suggest how they would like to alleviate these feelings, what kind of change in the position of the chairs would feel better and be more appropriate to them. This could be tested. The case-giver at this stage is a silent observer and listener.

4. For the last step, it’s the case-giver’s turn again. If the positions of the chairs have been moved by a member of the group he/she is also invited to try out how this new arrangement feels to him/her. But most importantly the case-giver at this stage should adjust the positions of the chairs in order to 'solve' the situation. What would be a positive new development, where would he/she like to go from the situation as she/he first explained it? This should be continued until the case-giver feels satisfied they have reached the best outcome or solution.

Constellation Work

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705815042575

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/12/familienaufstellung-germanys-group-therapy

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/12/familienaufstellung-germanys-group-therapy


Constellation Work

5. The debriefing is still an integral part of the exercise and extremely important in order to properly close this exercise. The facilitator asks the case-giver how he/she experienced the constellation work, how the feedback from the group resonated with him/her, the proposed adjustment as well as his/her own solution – and how he/she feels right now. The case-giver at this point often feels an urge to also explain more about the situation that was laid out and add more facts to the story. At the end, the rest of the group is invited to feed their experiences back.

Options for modification: The first modification is to do this kind of constellation work within a team. Here, there is the option to also use chairs and invite all team members to lay out their own view of a situation by using the chairs. This helps to explore each other’s perspectives and emotional experiences and thus create a deeper understanding and empathy for different realities.

As a second option, one or more chairs can also be used to represent a certain topic, situation or role in the team (for instance the chair as 'the centre of power' in the organisation). Then

all team members are invited to position themselves in relation to this chair. How close and how far, facing which direction, possibly also their individual posture: all these can express their own experience.

Another option for modification is the use of coloured paper in doing a constellation for a work

situation. The facilitator invites members of a team to lay out a representation or image of their organisation or working team by using paper, which can be torn or cut up into all kinds of shapes and sizes and then – similarly to the use of chairs – positioned in relation to each other.

After everyone is finished, the team visits every paper representation and gives their feedback on what they observe or perceive. In turn 'the artist' then explains what 'inner picture' in their head he/she aimed to depict. During the debriefing it’s important then to discuss the differences in perception of the organisation or work situation, what can be concluded and what issues need to be tackled.

Another option is to split the team up into pairs so two people present their images to each other, explore options of change and come up with a possible title for each image. Only after that all constellations are presented to the rest of the group. The same debriefing would then close the exercise.

Debriefing options: See above.


References

(You can find further resources as links in the tool-introductions.)

Beasley, Maya A., 2017: Beyond Diversity. A Roadmap to Building an Inclusive Organization. University of Connecticut. Downloadable: http://www.diversegreen.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/05/BeyondDiversity_Report.05.24.2017.pdf (checked 11.10.2019).

Glatz, Hans / Graf-Götz, Friedrich, 2011: Handbuch Organisation gestalten – Für Praktiker aus Profit- und Non-Profit-Unternehmen, Trainer und Berater. Weinheim, Beltz-Verlag. 2nd edition.

Häfele, Walter, 2009: OE-Prozesse initiieren und gestalten: Ein Handbuch für Führungskräfte, Berater/innen und Projektleiter/innen. Bern, Haupt-Verlag.

Kaner, Sam, 2014: Facilitators’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making. Hoboken, John Wiley & Sons. 3rd edition.

CommunityWise Resource Center, 2017: Anti-Racist Organizational Change: Resources and Tools for Non-Profits., Calgary, Alberta. Downloadable: http://communitywise.net/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/AROC-Resources-and-Tools_web.pdf (checked 13.10.2019).

Meisterheim, Tracy / Cretney, Steven / Cretney, Alison, 2011: The Weave. Participatory Process Design Guide for Strategic Sustainable Development. Downloadable: http://theweave.info/ (checked 13.10.2019).

Nauheimer, Holger: The Change Management Toolbook. A Collection of Tools, Methods and Strategies. Downloadable: https://www.change-management-toolbook.com/downloads (checked 13.10.2019).

Schein, Edgar, 2010: Organizational Culture and Leadership. Hoboken, John Wiley & Sons. 4th edition.

Slade, Samantha, 2018: Going Horizontal: Creating a Non-Hierarchical Organization, one Practice at a time. Oakland, Berrett-Koehler.

The Barefoot Guide Connection, 2017: Barefoot Guide 5: Mission Inclusion Stories and Practices of Building a World where All Belong. Downloadable: https://www.barefootguide.org/barefoot-guide-5--- english.html (checked 11.10.2019).

Western States Center, 2003: Dismantling Racism. A Resource Book for Social Change Groups. Portland. Downloadable: http://www.postoilsolutions.org/documents/dismantling_racism_resourcebook_western_states_cent er.pdf (checked: 11.10.2019).


Appendix


Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership'Star E – Standing Together Against Racism in Europe'

Project coordinator:

ICJA Freiwilligenaustausch weltweit e.V.

Berlin (Germany)

[email protected]

http://www.icja.de

Partner organisations:

ICYE Denmark

Aarhus (Denmark)

[email protected]

https://www.icye.dk/

Maailmanvaihto – ICYE Finland

Helsinki (Finland)

[email protected]

https://maailmanvaihto.fi/en/

Jeunesse Et Reconstruction

Paris (France)

[email protected]

http://www.volontariat.org

Althjodleg Ungmennaskipti (AUS Iceland)

Reykjavík (Iceland)

[email protected]

https://aus.is/


KERIC, Občianske Združenie

Čadca (Slovakia)

[email protected]

http://www.keric.sk/en/

ICYE United Kingdom

London (United Kingdom)

[email protected]

http://www.icye.org.uk/

Expert organisations:

SOCIUS Organisationsberatung gGmbH

Berlin (Germany)

[email protected]

https://socius.de/en/

UNITED for Intercultural Action/Subjective Values Foundation

European network against nationalism, racism, fascism and in support of migrants and refugees

Budapest (Hungary)

[email protected]

https://szubjektiv.org/en/

Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership'Star E – Standing together against Racism in Europe


PublisherSTAR E – Standing Together Against Racism in EuropeA partnership project run from 2017 to 2020 by a consortium of nine partner organisations from Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Slovak Republic and the United Kingdom.

Programme: Erasmus+ Programme of the European UnionKey Action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practicesProject Reference: 2017–1–DE04–KA205–015119Website: https://star-e.icja.de/

Project Coordinator:ICJA Freiwilligenaustausch weltweit e.V.Stralauer Allee 20e10245 [email protected]://www.icja.de

© Copyright by the publisherDistribution by the publisher

The paper for the content is FSC® certified and made from 100 % recycled paper.

ISBN: 978–3–9817490–4–5Berlin, 2020

Managing Organisational Change. Tools and Methods to Become a Diversity-Sensitive NGO ©STAR E – Standing Together Against Racism in Europe Partnership c/o ICJA Freiwilligenaustausch weltweit e.V.

The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0

International License. For further information see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode

The cover picture, logos and graphics are excluded from free licensing.

Imprint

Design & Layout:Linda Rodkjer

Editors:Simon Mohn, Joana Ebbinghaus, Christian Baier, Stephan Langenberg, Anni Koskela

Proofreading:Jonathan Potter

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode

86

Standing Together Against Racism: A Training Handbook

This handbook provides innovative concepts and methods to help train and sensitise facilitators, staff, volunteers and participants of youth and voluntary service organisations. These not only facilitate learning and reflection on the roots and symptoms of racism in our society, they also encourage ways of challenging the sometimes hidden racism and underlying discrimination in non-formal education activities run by youth and voluntary service organisations. Equally important are methods that aim to empower those who face racist attitudes and actions. Written by experts and practitioners for practitioners, this handbook covers methods with a wide variety of topics related to racism: empowerment, micro-aggression, power dynamics, stereotypes, prejudice, oppression, cultural differences, colonialism, critical thinking, critical whiteness, intolerance and more.

Date of publication: Berlin, 2020

Publisher: STAR E – Standing Together Against Racism in Europe

coordinated by ICJA Freiwilligenaustausch weltweit e.V.

ISBN: 978–3–9817490–3–8

The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.


Recommendation

Use This Handbook DigitallyA digital version of 'Managing organisational change - Tools and methods to become a diversity-sensitive NGO' is available on the STAR E project website:

https://star-e.icja.de/

https://star-e.icja.de/

ICJA Freiwilligenaustausch weltweit e.V.STAR ESTANDING TOGETHER AGAINST RACISM IN EUROPE

Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership

ICJA Freiwilligenaustausch weltweit e.V.

Standing together against Racism in Europe

Erasmus+ Project No 2017-1-DE04-KA205-015119

A digital version of this handbook is available on the STAR E project website: https://star-e.icja.de

Managing organisational change. Tools and methods to become a diversity-sensitive NGOThis handbook contains innovative tools and methods for managing change in organisations working in the field of international volunteer exchange. International volunteer organisations act within the context of increasingly polarised societies having to respond to challenges of growing racism and other forms of discrimination and exclusion. While increasing sensitivity towards discrimination and racism in their outreach programs, international volunteer exchange organisations also need to mirror this internally. This handbook provides a framework and practical tools to embark on a change process aiming to become a diversity-sensitive organisation. The tools cover the full range: from assessing structural issues, reflecting on collective behaviour and starting difficult conversations to building momentum and following through a vision. The handbook guides organisations through a well-crafted process.

M OrganisatiOnal Change - STAR E

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